


Be my shield

by dunklenacht310



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bottom Harry, Gay Sex, M/M, Mind-reading AU, Minor Characters Death, Pain, Rimming, Sci-Fi, Top Zayn, Two POVs, Unsafe Sex, another one of my contorted plots sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-20 16:17:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19995115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dunklenacht310/pseuds/dunklenacht310
Summary: “So you’re not looking at Harry train and imagining how running your tongue along his collarbone tattoos would feel like,” Louis says.“Stay out of my mind, Lou,” Zayn replies, narrowing his eyes.“You’re trained to block other people,” Louis shrugs. “It’s just that when it’s about Harry, your thoughts get all whacky. You fancy him.”“I don’t,” Zayn answers, hoping it sounds final, “And stay out of my mind anyway. He’s a resource for our op. Nothing else.”“Yeah, tell yourself that loud enough. Maybe you’ll believe it eventually."-Since about ten years, mind reading has become normal. Everybody can do it.Everybody, except Harry Styles.He's been living his life thinking he has some sort of disability.Until Zayn Malik shows up, and tells him that it's not a disability. It's a gift, and he needs it.Zayn also snogs him, but that's another story.





	1. Haruspex

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimer: I don't know or own any of the characters present in this work. I only own the plot and the original characters. 
> 
> The title of this chapter, _Haruspex_ , is a latin word for religious officials in Ancient Rome who interpreted omens in various ways.

Harry gets inside the small café with his laptop bag thrown over his shoulder, and a series of obnoxious little bells chime on top of the door when he opens it and then closes it again.

_Why does everything always have to be so loud_ , he thinks with a small frustrated grunt as he finds one of the few tables still available.

No, the thing is that they’re not particularly loud. It’s just that Harry hasn’t had any coffee yet, and he’s slept like shit.

He seems to be wired on studying and stressing even now that exam season is over with the first semester, and the Christmas lights have started to make their appearance in the streets and in the windows of most stores at night. And yet, Harry still has his usual jitteriness, nervousness, whatever you wanna call it.

Maybe it’s not even that. Maybe it’s just the telepathy thing.

He looks around, thinking about the weirdest fucking image he can come up with (Severus Snape from _Harry Potter_ dressed in skinny jeans and one of Harry’s floral button-downs, shouting “Ten points to Flower-puff!”), but nobody seems perturbed by that. No snorts, no weird glances in his direction.

Harry sighs. Everybody can read minds, it’s been like that for at least ten years, in every corner of the world.

And yet, Harry can’t. And nobody can read his.

Harry knows, rationally, that he should be happy that his thoughts stay private all the time, because he can’t imagine it must be pleasant, when you’re in the middle of a lecture and you start undressing the fit bloke in the front row with your mind, only for him to turn and shout at you that you’re a fucking pervert (True story. It happened once to Louis, the lad sitting next to Harry in Economy, and Harry doesn’t really know Louis, but he almost pissed himself laughing anyway).

But at the same time, Harry also feels like he’s the only one who can’t, and it’s some sort of disability he has. He wishes he knew what it felt like, to read minds. But he never could.

He sits at his table during exams and wears the anti-cheating devices provided by the government, not bothering to tell his professors that they’re useless on him, because he just _can’t_ cheat by reading minds.

He walks around thinking about absurd things, stupidly hoping someone will send him just a small, weird glance.

Nothing ever happens.

Nobody knows he can’t read minds, except his family (his closest friends would know if he had any, but alas). Nick knows too, even though he’s not that close with Harry. Nick’s a good lad, but they’re acquaintances at best, since they met for a teamwork paper three weeks ago and ended up being the only two people in their team who actually _did_ something.

Apparently, in a moment in which they were alone, Nick had tried to read Harry’s mind to check if Harry was into men and into _him_ , and when he’d come up short, he’d confronted Harry about it.

It had been painful, to say the least, to explain to Nick that Harry couldn’t read minds or _be_ read, and also that he didn’t fancy him that way, despite him being well into dicks.

He thought that would be the last he’d see of Nick, but Nick had just shrugged saying something about the sea being full of fish, and apparently, now they’re sort of friends.

Which is why Harry is sitting in a café at eight in the morning on a Sunday, with exams well over, waiting for Nick to have a coffee before Nick goes to work at the radio station in which he runs an early morning program. When Harry could have been sleeping.

But well, maybe Harry could use a friend. His mother is worried about him not having made any friends through his entire bachelor’s, for which he now only has one semester to go. Harry doesn’t need telepathy to know that.

Oh, yeah, telepathy is also a thing, consequently. Since people are able to read _each other’s_ minds, they can communicate like that.

Not Harry, though.

Nick sends him an _omw sorry_ text, and Harry rolls his eyes, deciding to start ordering his coffee because he just _needs_ it, okay?

He stands up to go to the counter, where he studies the menu, hand-written in chalk on a wide blackboard hung on the wall behind the register. He can see the girl working there as a cashier giving him the eye, and he hopes she doesn’t notice his _disability_. He doesn’t feel like explaining it to strangers.

When he makes up his mind about getting his favourite blueberry croissant and a cappuccino, he makes eye contact with the girl, who is frowning at him, because of course she noticed. She surely tried to read his mind to get ahead on his order, and she didn’t see anything.

_I’m really the only one, am I?_ , Harry sighs to himself.

The girl pops a balloon with the chewing-gum in her mouth, and then frowns some more. The _pop_ of the gum almost hurts Harry’s ears. “’S weird,” she says, slurring her consonants.

Harry nods and sighs again. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she confirms, speaking much too loudly for Harry’s taste. He can feel a couple people watch him and her, behind his back. “Are you, like, impaired?”

“That’s not very nice, innit?” Harry replies, forcing himself to speak as quietly as he can.

The girl hums. “Whatcha say? Didn’t hear ya,” she replies, with a little grin that Harry instantly hates.

It’s too fucking early for this. “I said that you’re not very nice.”

Harry can hear people murmur from the tables, and he catches the words “mind reading”, “weird” and “not hearing anything”.

_They’re noticing. There’s really something wrong with me_ , he thinks.

Someone grabs him by an arm, and Harry is ready to shrug off whoever it is, even if it’s Nick finally gracing him with his presence. When he turns, though, it’s not Nick.

It’s a man, probably a couple years older than Harry, twenty-five tops, and he’s bloody _gorgeous_. He’s smiling at Harry, with soft, full lips and perfect teeth, and his eyes are caramel-coloured, very big, with long eyelashes. His cheekbones look like someone carved them into fucking marble.

“You should stop doing that, babe, nobody ever believes you anyway,” he says, and then adds, for the girl, “Don’t mind him. He likes to play pranks,” before he turns to look at Harry again. “Hey, babe. Missed you loads,” he says with a smile, and then he kisses Harry.

+

“What the _everloving fuck_ is happening?” Harry hisses as the guy who just fucking _kissed_ him gently but firmly drags him out of the café.

The guy chuckles. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, I’m gonna explain in a moment.”

“Make it _now_ ,” Harry grunts, snatching his arm away from the lad’s grip and stopping in the middle of the street. “You _kissed_ me! What the fuck was that?”

“Lower your voice, Harry Styles,” the guy replies through his teeth. “I only did it to cause a bit of a thoughts-frenzy. So people would stop noticing they can’t hear _you_.”

Harry blinks. “How do you know my name? What’s going on?”

The guy rolls his eyes. “I told Niall he was gonna throw a strop,” he says, apparently to himself, and then takes a breath, looking back at Harry. “Listen, okay? My name’s Zayn. Zayn Malik. And I _really_ can’t talk about what’s going on in the middle of the street, yeah? My car is over there. Let’s get in there and I’ll explain.”

Harry laughs, hard, while the guy who said is called Zayn Malik gapes a little. “How old do you think I am, five? I’m not gonna fall for the ‘My car is safe’ stunt. Next thing I know you knock me on the head and sell my fucking organs on the black market.”

Zayn rolls his eyes again. “It would take a proper anaesthesia to take out your organs, Harry, I can’t knock you on the head and do that.”

Harry feels his palms starting to sweat. “Not doing anything to convince me with this answer.”

Zayn sighs, and the next moment he grabs Harry by the shoulders, boring his eyes into Harry’s. “Listen to me, Harry Styles. I know you can’t read minds. I know you always feel like you hear everything just a bit _louder_ , and it drives you crazy, sometimes. I know you make up absurd images every now and then and hope for someone to see them. I know you think it’s a disability. It’s not, Harry. It’s a _gift_ , the shield in your mind. And if you give me the chance, I’ll tell you why. How’s that for convincing?” he says, slowly and steadily.

Harry’s insides twist a little. How does this person _know_ all this stuff?

He’s probably losing his mind, because he finds himself nodding, and when Zayn opens the passenger door of an anonymous black car, Harry gets inside. “Please don’t be a murderer,” he tells Zayn, knowing he sounds ridiculous.

Zayn grins. “You’ll have to wait to find out.”

Harry laughs hysterically. “Still not fucking convincing me.”

Zayn ignores him, and gets to the wheel, starting the engine. When Harry asks where the fuck they’re going, he doesn’t reply.

_I’m probably gonna be dead soon_ , Harry realizes.

+

It turns out Zayn doesn’t want to kill him.

He only drives for maybe five minutes, until they reach one of the smallest parks in the city, and then he gestures for Harry to come out of the car.

They walk for a while, none of them speaking. Harry can’t bring himself to ask any questions, because the words Zayn has told him earlier are still echoing in his mind.

_I know you think it’s a disability._

_It’s not, Harry._

_It’s a_ gift _, the shield in your mind._

Harry doesn’t believe it, but what if this Zayn guy knows better? Should he trust him?

His phone buzzes in his pocket, for maybe the hundredth time. It’s Nick, Harry knows. He takes the phone out of his pocket, but before he can thumb the screen open, Zayn plucks it out of his fingers and tuts. “Sorry, babe. I can’t have you tell anyone you’re with me.”

“Don’t call me babe,” Harry replies, feeling an annoying warmth in his cheeks. “It’s my friend, he’s gonna worry if I just fuck off. And what’s all this mystery anyway?”

Zayn looks at him for a moment, and then hands him back his phone, very slowly. “You only tell him something came up, that you’re fine and you’re gonna call him back in a while.”

“Am I fine?” Harry mutters to himself. Zayn only arches his eyebrow, still holding the phone out of Harry’s reach. Harry rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay. Jesus. Okay.”

Zayn gives him the fucking phone, and Harry rolls his eyes again when he sees him peek to check what Harry’s writing. _Hey, Nick, sorry I had to leave. Something came up. I’m fine though, I’ll call you back later and explain. xxx_

“That’s a lot of x’s for a friend,” Zayn comments light-heartedly.

“Mind your own business,” Harry replies, “Where _are_ we going?”

Zayn grins and points at an ice-cream truck stationed by the side of the park. “I’m feeling like lemon and pistachio.” he says.

Harry has a feeling Zayn said that because he _knows_ it’s Harry’s favourite ice-cream combo. “What the fuck…” he murmurs, but follows Zayn to the booth anyway.

Harry’s right, because Zayn orders two lemon and pistachio ice-cream cones, giving one to Harry, and when he licks on his own, Zayn grimaces. Harry, despite himself, chuckles. “Serves you right. How long have you been stalking me?”

“We aren’t stalking you. Observing you, more like,” Zayn replies.

“We?”

Zayn nods. He gestures to a pretty solitary bench under a tree, and Harry sits down, immediately followed by Zayn. “I work for a paramilitary organisation called Haruspex. We… look for people like you, among other things. You’re the only one in Europe, for what we know.”

Harry tries to play it cool, not to show Zayn he’s still not understanding, and still worried. “Blokes with curls, dimples and questionable shirts?”

Zayn laughs openly. It’s quite interesting to watch, because his smile is lovely and eye-crinkling, and he doesn’t look nearly as intimidating as he did a moment earlier, despite the aggressive combat boots and the—admittedly cool—leather jacket. “No,” he says at last “Immunes.”

“Immunes?”

Zayn nods. “The Telepath Disease spread out worldwide ten years ago, as you might know.”

Harry wouldn’t exactly call it a _disease_ , but he doesn’t reply, and lets Zayn speak. “The whole world population got contaminated, and started being able to read minds. Well, _almost_ the whole world population. There are people, we estimated that there’s only a dozen in the whole Earth headcount, who were immune to the Disease. The Immunes. They’re so rare that most people don’t even know Immunes _exist_. You’re one of those, and as I said, you are the only one in Europe, that we know of. It took me a fucking long time to find you, Harry Styles.”

Harry’s head is already spinning. _Me? Immune? I just thought I had a disability? Should I trust this bloke? Maybe he’s crazy. Crazy hot, but also crazy_ period _._ “So what does your ‘organisation’ do?” he asks Zayn, mimicking inverted commas in the air with his fingers when he says the word ‘organisation’.

Zayn doesn’t seem deterred. “Haruspex works to find the cause of the Disease, how it was created, how it spread, and how to stop it.”

Harry does his best not to snort a laugh. “You’re saying it like _someone_ created this… Disease.”

“Because it’s true. We… I shouldn’t be already telling you this, but I understand you need more intel to believe me and trust me. We think it was something in the air, a gas or a toxin, something that has been dispersed in the air ten years ago by _someone_ ,” Zayn says, licking his own lips and distracting Harry for a second. “Have you ever heard of the Shield? The… the pills?”

Harry has. It’s kind of like a legend, like alligators in American sewers, Bigfoot and the Yeti. “Yeah,” he says nonetheless. “People say there are pills which temporarily allow you to shield your mind from others. I think it’s bullshit.”

“Well, it’s not,” Zayn says dryly. “The Shield exists. It’s absurdly difficult to find, and even when you do, it costs a small fortune, but it does exist. You gulp down a small pill, and you have a couple days of blissfully empty head.”

“Blissfully,” Harry scoffs, “I don’t even know why people would do it. Like, I get it, privacy and all. But still, mind reading sounds pretty cool. And even if it’s not, like, if you think mind reading is such a bad thing, then these people creating a way to fight it should be doing you a favour? Like, a good thing?”

Zayn shakes his head. “The Oracle, that’s the name of the organisation who produces the Shield, are probably the very creators of the Telepath Disease. We think they created the Disease, only to be able to have a cure, and exploit the outcome. We’re talking about unimaginable amounts of money, Harry. Like, sums that could easily solve hunger in the Third World.”

Harry sighs. “That’s all very noble, that you think about poor kids in Africa, really, but what does it change for you? You don’t exactly look like charity to me.”

Zayn sighs. “Telepathy is _dangerous_ , Harry. It can be used for minor, petty things, but it can also be used by criminals. Organised crime is having the time of their fucking lives as per ten years ago. In the last ten years, the crime rate has increased tenfold. And it’s going up and up and up,” he says, raising a finger in the air, only to drop it down really quickly, snapping his fingers in front of Harry’s face and making him start. “Until soon all the fucking criminals will always be one step ahead of justice, free. Serial killers. Rapists. Robbers. Abusers. All of ‘em. Free forever. Does it sound like a good world to you?”

Harry doesn’t reply, but he reluctantly shakes his head, because he never thought about that, but Zayn is kinda right. “And what role do I play in this, exactly?” he asks at last.

Zayn smiles. “You’re an Immune. First of all, my research has advanced the hypothesis your blood could hold a permanent cure for the Disease. Second of all, we need an Immune for our investigation. To find out _who_ Oracle is, every single one of them, and to make sure to catch them and bring them to justice. Annihilate the Disease. Stop the illegal trafficking of the Shield. Find out the true origin of the Disease so that we can find a way to stop it,” he takes a breath. “We _need_ you, Harry. I’ve watched you for months, you’re my personal finding and probably my only true victory. You think you’re disabled, but you’re not. You are even more special than the rest of us who can read minds. You’re one of the very few _real_ people left on Earth.”

Harry gulps down. “Who the _fuck_ are you?” he only asks, feeling his stomach turn upside down, the ice-cream forgotten and melting down his hand.

Zayn smiles again. “I’m a mind scientist at Haruspex.”

“Are you gonna make me your lab rat?” Harry sighs.

Zayn winks at him, he fucking _winks_ at Harry. “Only if you’re into it.”

+

“Am I never gonna see my family again?” Harry asks when they’re in Zayn’s car again, driving to God knows where. Again.

Zayn rolls his eyes. “Don’t be so melodramatic,” he replies. “Of course you’re gonna see your family again. You won’t _live_ at Haruspex and abandon life as you’ve always known it and all that shit. You’re gonna _work_ for us. Well, not work, they ain’t gonna pay you or anything. You’re gonna help us. Do a little bit of training, maybe. For the rest, you’re still gonna have your life, your family, your studies, your friends. We’re not a fucking _cult_ , Harry.”

Harry snorts at that, while Zayn enters a subterranean garage and parks his car in a spot labelled ‘Doc. Zayn Malik’. “What friends?” he scoffs, “You stalked me for months, you said. You should know I have literally zero friends.”

Zayn gets out of the car, and so does Harry. “What about _Nick_?” Zayn asks, his eyebrows a bit arched.

Harry rolls his eyes. “Nick is an acquaintance. I only met him three weeks ago, and it was kinda awkward and I still don’t really know him. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“No, indeed,” Zayn replies quietly, and starts walking towards an elevator. “Anyway. See it like this: you’ll have kind of a part-time, unpaid job. Like a consultant. You’ll help us figure out some very important things. Haruspex will probably insist that you do a little bit of physical training, it’s mandatory, but I assure you it’s nothing much, not for civilians like you. It’s like going to the gym.”

Harry sighs. “It already sounds too much,” he comments.

“For the rest,” Zayn ignores Harry and pushes on the lift button, “You’re gonna be home, doing whatever it is you wanna do, writing your thesis ‘cause you only have one semester left, and keeping going with your normal life. That’s it.”

“It’s creepy, that you know so many things about me,” Harry says, getting in the lift after Zayn and wondering what the fuck he’s getting himself into.

“It’s for the sake of science,” Zayn declares, “One thing, though. You can’t talk about Haruspex and whatever you’re gonna learn here. To _anyone_ , Harry. The director is gonna have you sign papers about secrecy. If you break those rules, you’re legally punishable.”

Harry sighs. “I don’t have friends, as I said. And I think if I even tried to tell this to my mother, she’d have me locked in a padded room with a straitjacket on, and throw away the key.”

Zayn chuckles. “I’ve been working for Haruspex, full-time and as a _real_ job, for three years, and my own mother still doesn’t know. It gets easier with time. The omitting and the little white lies.”

Harry doesn’t reply, but he thinks it’s kind of sad.

The lift dings and opens at floor 21— _how many floors are there in this building?_ —revealing a bright white corridor along which Harry counts at least ten doors labelled with names. Zayn doesn’t stop for a second, walking steadily until the end of it, and then turning right at the corner.

Harry finds himself in a circular room with tables, armchairs, coffee and tea machines. It looks like a cafeteria in some fancy company. It’s deserted in that moment, and everything is bright, because the walls and the floor are white, and there are big, floor-to-ceiling windows that look so clean that they give the impression of not even being there. Outside, Harry can see the whole city spread out like a picture. The armchairs by the windows are also white, and all the tables are made of glass, with steel legs. Everything looks spotless and bright.

He follows Zayn towards another door, and he reads _Doc. Zayn Malik, Mind Dept. Director_. “So you’re the boss?”

Zayn chuckles. “Nope. I’m the Head of the Mind Department. It’s the organ in Haruspex that deals with the scientific aspects of the Disease problem. My specialization is in Immunology. But not the normal, medical one you’re thinking of. Immunology as in, tracking and studying of Immunes. Consequently, I’m also in charge of this whole Shield thing, since the pill is linked to Immunes for sure. I guess you can say I coordinate the whole scientific side of the operation, but Haruspex deals with a shitton of other things linked to the Disease. Haruspex has been created something like a year after the Disease spread, and it’s been operative ever since,” Zayn explains, inserting a weird-looking key in the lock on the door.

Harry sees him roll his eyes when he turns the key, because it turns loosely, like the door is already open. “Those three, always fucking breaking in my lab,” Zayn mutters and then opens the door with a bang.

Harry hears squeals, hisses and the noises of something falling, and he closes his eyes. The commotion hurts his ears. He vaguely remembers Zayn talking about Harry’s problem with loud noises as well, but he doesn’t ask, because his brain is already straining to keep in all the info Zayn is listing like they’re nothing.

Zayn looks at him, searching Harry’s face after the noises, like he knows they hurt Harry. He does. He knows _everything_ about Harry, apparently. Harry holds his gaze, because he doesn’t want to look like a kid just thrown into a spy mission out of the blue, and then even manages a decent smile.

“Alright?” Zayn only asks.

Harry nods. “Yeah. ‘S just. Noises.”

Zayn nods too. “I know. We’ll talk about that in a while. First of all, come in. And let me introduce you to my three closest friends and _subordinates_ who broke into my studio, _again_ , because they were too excited to meet you and they couldn’t fucking wait,” he says, a bit louder, but not too much.

Harry follows Zayn inside the room.

There are three men sitting around a fairly big, circular desk full of things Harry has never even seen before. They’re smiling angelically. One of them has peroxide blonde hair and he’s wearing a t-shirt with ‘Crazy MOFOS’ printed on it. The other, a ripped guy with a gentle smile, is wearing a tank top and sweatpants, and he has tattoos all over his arms, in patterns Harry can’t make out from the doorstep.

And the third. The third man is…

“Louis?” Harry almost shrieks. Because it _is_ Louis, the bloke sitting next to him in Economy, the one who once was having dirty thoughts about someone sitting in the front row, and had got caught because the guy read Louis’s mind.

Louis smiles. “Hello, Hazza,” he says with a grin.

_Hazza? We never fucking spoke before_. “We have _classes_ together!” Harry exclaims, because somehow, that feels like it has to be pointed out.

Louis sighs. “Yeah, I’m glad the show’s finally over and I don’t have to pretend taking notes anymore.”

“What?” Harry hisses.

Zayn pats him lightly on the shoulder. “I sent Louis to take a couple of classes with you, because I needed to make sure you were an Immune, and I needed to be close to you for that. Sorry about the small lie.”

_Small lie? This doesn’t feel like a small lie_. It feels like this organisation has been _stalking_ Harry even more than he thought, that _Zayn_ stalked Harry even more than he thought. For some reason, the thing about Zayn sending someone fucking _undercover_ in Harry’s lectures to keep an eye on him is what bothers him the most, like he thought he was safe wherever he went, but instead, someone was always watching him.

_Not someone. Zayn_.

Zayn must see the turmoil in Harry’s mind, even if he can’t read it, because he clears his throat. “Sorry,” he says again. “Anyway. Louis Tomlinson, he’s a fellow scientist here, specialized in the making of drugs and serums. Niall Horan” he points at the blonde guy “Tech. He takes care of our, um, devices and such. Liam Payne, he’s a real paramilitary. We all received paramilitary training when we joined Haruspex, but Liam is an actual soldier, although not on the government’s payroll. He takes care of training new recruits, coordinates operations of various kinds whenever a Haruspex military team is needed.”

Harry’s head is spinning, and he suddenly remembers he hasn’t had coffee nor breakfast, because he was waiting for Nick, and then Zayn took him away. “Can I sit?” he asks, clearing his throat, “I need to sit.”

Louis rustles to get up from his chair, and Zayn looks a bit worried as he gently guides Harry to the chair and lets him sit. Niall pushes a tray with coffee and a blueberry croissant in front of Harry with a smile. “Eat, Harry. I personally took care of getting you your favourite things,” he says. He has an Irish accent.

Harry looks at the food and the coffee, and he understands from Niall’s gentle tone that he means well, or at least as well as this whole organisation can mean, but Harry is also reminded that he’s been watched for so long that these people even know what his favourite ice-cream and breakfast are, and it feels a bit too much.

He gulps down a sip of coffee anyway, and then bites on the croissant, praying that the sugar gets into his system quickly.

Zayn sits on the table next to him, and he’s frowning, his big eyes a bit narrowed. “I’m sorry this is a lot, Harry,” he says carefully. “But we really fucking need you. If we didn’t, I wouldn’t have invaded your privacy like this, I wouldn’t have put Louis on your tail, and I wouldn’t have ruined your date.”

Harry feels his cheeks warm up. “It wasn’t a date. I don’t even know Nick that well, and I don’t like _like_ him,” he clarifies even though he has no reason to do that.

Louis laughs and screams “Oooi!” in a way that almost deafens Harry, before remembering Harry’s little hearing problem and covering his mouth with a hand. He’s still snickering, though, and he’s shoving his open palm towards Niall and Liam, who mutter and hand him a tenner each.

Harry must be going crazy, because the fact that those people were betting on his love life is quite funny, since they watched him all the time and they must know Harry has _no_ love life. So he laughs a little, and then he laughs more.

After a moment, he hears Zayn do the same. When he does, Harry weirdly feels a bit more settled.

They sober up shortly after, when Harry’s attention is caught by one of the many monitors and screens lined along one of the walls of Zayn’s studio. Harry doesn’t understand what those screens report, but one of them clearly reads _Immune #3: Harry Edward Styles, 23_. There are a series of symbols, numbers and things listed, some little lights are flashing, there are different kinds of _beep_ s coming from the monitors.

Harry doesn’t speak, and he knows the noises are really minimal, but he’s grateful to Zayn anyway when he stands up, pushes some buttons, and all the beeping stops. Harry sighs. “Cheers. I think I might be losing my mind, with all these sounds bothering me.”

Zayn shakes his head. “No, you’re not. It’s… we don’t have many data on the Immunes. But we know that all the ones we found and know have your same trouble with the noises. Like your hearing is finer than other people. I still don’t know why, though. There’s a lot of things I don’t know still, Harry. I hope you’ll help me figure them out.”

Harry, despite himself, nods. “Why am I number three?” he asks, pointing at the screen with his head.

It’s Louis who replies. “We only know of four Immunes at the moment, even though we have estimated that there has to be about a dozen of you around the world,” he says, “The first we found is a little girl in Russia, Mariya Petrova. She’s ten, born exactly three months after the Disease started, so we can’t exactly use her. Not that we wanna _use_ _you_!” he amends muttering a curse under his breath. “Sorry, I’m shit at being tactful. That’s Zayn’s job.”

Harry snorts. “Didn’t do that good of a job,” he comments arching an eyebrow. “But I got a snog out of it, so I guess it’s fine.”

Zayn clears his throat without replying, and Harry grins a little to himself, keeping his attention on Louis, who gives him a grin of his own and then continues his explanation. “The second one is another child, Lyla Parker from Massachusetts, she's eleven. You're the third we found, and as for Immune #4, we don’t know his name. He's an adult like you. We only found out his location, but when we got there, he was gone without a trace. We, uh, we think he’s working with Oracle, from the documents and evidence we found in his old place. But there was nothing about his name and personal info. Like he didn’t want anyone to figure out who he was.”

“It would explain a lot, if Oracle had an Immune on their side,” Zayn nods, “If I’m right and Immunes are needed to find a cure to the Disease, then it’s only fair to assume an Immune is needed to create the Shield as well.”

“It makes sense,” Harry agrees. “Zayn?” he then calls out, taking a deep breath.

“Yes, Harry.”

“If I help you,” Harry says slowly, “I don’t wanna be a fucking number. And I don’t wanna be a lab rat. I wanna be _me_. Harry.”

Zayn stands up and then kneels in front of Harry who’s sitting, so that they are at eye level. Harry thinks Zayn’s eyes are a bit feverish, a bit bright, like he’s excited and trying to conceal it. “You’ve been _Harry_ to me since I fucking found you, babe,” he says slowly.

Harry hears the other three men hum sarcastically, but he doesn’t ask what they think, because he can do nothing but keep his eyes on Zayn’s. “Okay,” Harry says at last, “I still don’t understand what I gotta do, but I guess I’ll help you.”

Zayn smiles, and Harry’s stomach flutters a little for no reason at all.


	2. Aegis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Internal monologues, Zed,” Niall sighs. “I swear I didn’t think you spoke so much in your mind when you’re always so quiet on the outside.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual disclaimer: I don't know or own any of the characters present in this work. I only own the plot and the original characters.
> 
> The Latin word "Aegis" is usually an attribute of Zeus and Athene (or their Roman counterparts Jupiter and Minerva), referred to their shields.

**Five months later**

“You should be careful, Zed, you know that?” Louis comments as they’re both in the second cafeteria, next to the training room.

Zayn realizes he’s been distracted watching Harry lift, instructed by Liam and laughing as he says something, which makes Liam laugh as well. He hums questioningly at Louis, pretending not to have caught what he said, and hoping he won’t repeat it.

He’s not that lucky. “I said you gotta be careful, you massive shithead,” Louis says, “Heard me now?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So you’re not looking at Harry train and imagining how running your tongue along his collarbone tattoos would feel like,” Louis replies.

Zayn chokes on his coffee, spluttering a bit and coughing while Louis sighs and pats him on the back. “Stay out of my mind, Lou,” he says, narrowing his eyes.

“You’re trained to block other people,” Louis shrugs. “It’s just that when it’s about Harry, your thoughts get all whacky. You fancy him.”

“I don’t,” Zayn answers, hoping it sounds final, “And stay out of my mind anyway. He’s a resource for our op. Nothing else.”

“Yeah, tell yourself that loud enough. Maybe you’ll believe it eventually,” Louis says unperturbed, standing up, “I gotta go back to the lab and see if we have results from the latest analysis on Harry’s blood. I doubt so. We’ve almost sucked him dry, the poor bloke, but we still don’t have a fucking clue.”

Zayn doesn’t reply, and just nods, because he knows Louis is right.

They have gathered more info about the Immunes since Harry became part of Haruspex. But nothing useful for their scopes. They’re still stumbling in the dark when it’s about the Shield, Oracle, and the Disease per se.

They have found two more Immunes in the last five months, another in the States and one in Australia, but they haven’t gone fetch them, because they’re all kids, just as Mariya Petrova and Lyla Parker. Harry and the nameless Immune working for Oracle seem to be the only adult ones. It doesn’t matter much, because they still don’t have anything on Immune #4 either. No name, no picture, no whereabouts.

Zayn dreads the moment in which the Director will not deem Harry useful anymore, and will send him on his way with a fuckton of money to keep his mouth shut. Zayn will never see him again, will never be _allowed_ to see him again.

He watches Harry continue his training, laughing with Liam and dimples showing. It’s late, almost ten, and Zayn knows Harry turned in his bachelor’s thesis today. Nonetheless, as soon as he was done in the afternoon, Harry had showed up at Haruspex as usual, shrugging and saying he wouldn’t miss a day of training and his weekly tests with Zayn in the lab.

_We sucked him dry, the poor bloke_ , Louis has said.

It’s true, Zayn thinks with a sigh. He has vials and vials of Harry’s blood in his lab, piles and piles of his brain scans, mountains of lab reports on his physical and mental conditions. Still, they have no clue about how the shield in Harry’s mind came to be, or if it’s been there from birth. They even gave it a name, Aegis, because Zayn (and the whole Haruspex) has a thing for always giving the right name to stuff. But even with the name, Zayn has no clue about how to _use_ it to create a permanent cure. He doesn’t even know how to use it if he would want to replicate the Shield pills.

The more they learn, the more they don’t know anything, feels like.

“Zed?” he hears Niall call him and sit next to him, “I have something I wanted to run by you.”

Zayn nods, tearing his eyes away from Harry on the other side of the plexiglass wall of the gym, bare-chested and glistening with sweat. He’s trained every day for five months, and it kinda shows. He’s got defined abs and biceps, now, and he looks broader than when Zayn first met him, even though Zayn objectively knows Harry has always had broad shoulders.

Niall clears his throat, but he gracefully doesn’t comment about what he probably saw in Zayn’s mind. Zayn can’t be bothered to strain to block his mind, today. It’s debilitating.

“So, Harry’s university doesn’t have a graduation ceremony for this session,” Niall tells Zayn, “And Harry said he doesn’t want to have a party because it would be lame if it was just his mother, stepfather and sister.”

Zayn sighs, and doesn’t reply.

“But we’re friends with Harry now, yeah?” Niall continues, “Like, proper friends. Not friends like that shady bloke Nick who only calls him to hang out once a month and then always tries to shove his hands down Harry’s pants.”

Zayn has to do his best to stop the turmoil of _things_ he feels at Niall’s words. It’s true, that Nick lad is obnoxious and a slag, and Zayn honestly thinks Harry is only friends with him because he doesn’t want to admit that the only friend he made in university is kind of a shitty person. Zayn can only hope that now that Harry’s bachelor’s is done, Nick will slowly go fuck himself out of the picture.

And hope Harry also thinks they’re _proper_ friends, like Niall says. Otherwise, Harry himself is gonna fuck off out of the picture, _Zayn’s_ picture, very soon.

“Zed, you gotta stop your internal monologues, it’s confusing, I don’t understand them,” Niall sighs, not unkindly.

Zayn clears his throat. “Sorry. So, were you saying?”

“He said he doesn’t want to have a party, but we should do something, he fucking _graduated_ today,” Niall almost grunts, “So me and Liam and Louis were thinking of taking him out. Go dance, have a drink. You too, of course. Do you think it’s a good idea?”

Zayn thinks that bringing Harry to a place as loud as a dance club is a _horrible_ idea, but then he’s reminded that Niall built special, minuscule in-ears for Harry, which manage to reduce the amplified sounds for him, bringing his hearing to the one of a normal person. Not that Harry isn’t normal. Sometimes Zayn thinks Harry is the _only_ normal person he knows.

So maybe he’ll be fine in a club. After all, he told Zayn that he went to a concert with fucking Nick, and he was fine, wasn’t he?

“Internal monologues, Zed,” Niall sighs again. “I swear I didn’t think you spoke _so much_ in your mind when you’re always so quiet on the outside.”

Zayn rolls his eyes. “I contain multitudes, Niall,” he says sarcastically. “I still have to do him a brain scan when he’s done with Liam. But yeah, after that, we could go if he wants to,” he adds at last.

Haruspex doesn’t have any rules about taking the Immune on a night out, after all.

+

“Hey, Zayn,” Harry announces his presence, plopping into the chair for the brain scan without Zayn even noticing he got in the lab. _He’s getting good, isn’t he_.

Zayn smiles, forcing himself to stop sulking before remembering that Harry is the only one who _can’t_ read his mind. Luckily. Because he’s still all sweaty and his hair is in a bun and curling more than usual around his ears, and Zayn can see the swallows on his collarbones peek out from the tank top he wears to train.

“You okay?” Harry frowns, “You seem a bit upset.”

Zayn does his best to laugh. “Have you started reading minds as well? Shit, we gotta do all the tests again, now.”

Harry laughs as well and rolls his eyes. “I don’t need mind reading to know when my friends have something bothering them,” he says, jabbing a finger in between Zayn’s pecs.

Zayn smiles, because Harry is just there calling him one of his friends, and it feels like fifty years have passed since Zayn snogged him in a café and dragged him to Haruspex and sent his life upside-down.

“You look more… at ease, here,” Zayn comments warily, slowly disentangling Harry’s hair-tie to let Harry’s hair loose, so that he can properly rest his head on the chair.

Harry hums, his eyes closed like he’s enjoying Zayn fumbling with his hair. “I like it here,” he just replies. “There’s you and the lads. I know it’s work,” he amends quickly, “But it also feels like home. I know everybody by now. Gretchen at the entrance desk is about to get married to _Jason_ from upstairs in the minor mind-reading crimes department, can you believe this shit?” he giggles, “I thought he was gay, Zayn.”

“Maybe he is and he doesn’t know yet,” Zayn says jokingly.

Harry gasps. “No, Zayn, don’t say that. Gretchen is _so_ nice, she deserves a husband who likes her and will always be able to get it up for her.”

Zayn snorts a laugh, and positions Harry’s head in the hollow headrest of the chair. “The average male stops being able to _always_ get it up around fifty-five years old,” he replies, “So good ol’ Gretchen should treasure the next ten years, after that it’ll be all gone.”

Harry hums. “I hate when you go all scientist on me, Zayn. You always ruin the romance.”

“Sorry babe,” Zayn says without thinking about it, because he never does when he speaks to Harry, he doesn’t _have_ to. That’s about the only freedom of movement he has with Harry, to call him with that pet name and then pretend it’s nothing.

Harry doesn’t blush at the pet name anymore, not like he used to do. Sometimes, Zayn would really like to be able to read Harry’s mind like he can do everybody else, because not ever knowing what Harry thinks it’s frustrating. He scoffs a little at himself, because this is exactly what he _fights_ at Haruspex. People should _not_ be able to read each other’s thoughts.

It’s dangerous, it makes crime go up and up and up, and it’s also _wrong_.

“Do you still feel like you’d like to be like the rest of us?” Zayn finds himself asking as he positions all the small sensors on Harry’s temples, “That you’d like to read minds?”

Harry still has his eyes closed, and he hums. “I mean, it would be pretty cool. But then it would also be the other way round. I’ve come to terms with the fact that most of the time I _definitely_ don’t want people to know what I’m thinking,” he says, and his face goes a bit redder when he says that last part.

Zayn would die to know why Harry is blushing. But he can’t read it, and he doesn’t ask.

The monitors and screens for Harry’s brain activity whir to life, and Zayn observes the brain scans for a while without speaking. Everything seems to be normal, so fucking normal. As usual.

“Zayn? Can I speak?” Harry asks in a whisper.

Zayn chuckles. “You’re already speaking. Whispering still counts,” he clarifies. “Yeah, actually, it’s better if you speak.”

“What do you see in me?”

Zayn is a bit taken aback by the question. _So much, Harry_ , he’d like to answer. _I see someone kind and fun who doesn’t think I’m batshit for spending my nights here in this lab trying to look for something we’re probably never gonna find._

“I mean, in my brain,” Harry corrects clearing his throat. “You never tell me what you see. Is my brain… different?”

Zayn finally understands Harry’s just talking about the scans, and he curses himself a little for that useless train of thought he just had. He smiles, and gets closer to the screen, pointing at the 3D representation of Harry’s brain. “You see this thing here?” he asks, circling the electric blue barrier in the middle of Harry’s brain.

Harry nods.

“That’s your Aegis,” Zayn explains, “It’s the thing that blocks you from reading minds and being read. Nobody has it. We don’t know if it’s something you had from birth, or if it’s something that grew when you came in contact with the Disease.”

Harry gapes. “So I really have _something_ in my brain? The Aegis is not just, like, a _concept_?”

“We don’t know if it’s a physical barrier as well, or if it’s just made of brainwaves, to be honest,” Zayn admits a bit defeatedly. “We would have to open your head and cut your brain in half. Somehow I think that you wouldn’t survive such an invasive test,” he adds with a grin.

Harry gulps down. “You’re so fucking scary when you joke like this,” he comments, “So all the Immunes have the Aegis?”

Zayn nods. “It varies, though. The colour is always different. Mariya Petrova, the Russian little girl, has an orange one. Alex Olsen and Lyla Parker, the two kids we found in the States, have Aegises coloured in purple and yellow. The kid in Australia, George Taylor, has a brown one. We don't know about the one Immune #4 has, we've never been close enough to him to catch his brainwaves,” he tells Harry but keeps staring at the screen. “They’re also different in shape. For what we’ve seen, the kids’ Aegises are smaller, and they don’t extend vertically, but more obliquely. Yours is bigger, and perfectly straight, going from the upper part of your brain right down to the bottom. I don’t know if it’s ‘cause you’re an adult, and I don’t know if the Aegis changes throughout the years. Yours hasn’t changed in the last months, and Mariya’s hasn’t either, in the last year since we found her. We take her brain scans regularly, through our Russian headquarters. It costs us a fuckton of money. Her parents want to be paid every time.”

Harry arches his eyebrows. “Paid? To have their kid scanned for a second? It doesn’t even hurt, Jesus.”

Zayn shrugs. “It’s not because we hurt her, Haz. I think Mariya’s parents would fucking _sell_ her if they found someone with enough money. That’s why I’m worried about her a little, and I coordinate her tests personally. I’m afraid at some point Oracle will find her, and _buy_ her. Her parents wouldn’t give a fuck for the right price.”

He sees it’s probably the wrong thing to say, because Harry’s face falls, and he becomes sadder and sadder, looking down and fidgeting with a hole in his skinny jeans. “Can’t we go pick her up? We could take care of her here? She’s just ten, Zayn.”

“We can’t,” Zayn sighs, “Her parents would never give her up like that. And would you ever take a ten-year-old and throw her in the middle of… _this_?” he gestures around, not meaning the lab per se, but the whole Haruspex concept.

Harry chuckles. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right. I mean, I’m twenty-three and I freaked the fuck out when I first met you all.”

Zayn’s stomach turns a little at Harry’s words, and before he can actually decide, he takes some steps forward, until he’s standing right next to Harry, towering over him a little since he’s still laying down in the chair. “But not anymore?” he asks Harry, quietly, “You… you’re fine now? And you like it here?”

Harry smiles. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Zayn. I do like it here. In fact, I like it so much that I might ask the Director to give me a real job here, now that I’m officially out of uni.”

Zayn’s heart pounds, and in that moment, he thanks God for Harry being an Immune. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

Harry’s face becomes more serious. “But I do mean it. Zayn, what you do here is _the right thing_ , I understand that now. And this whole… thing, it gave me a purpose. It gave me people who understand me, people who don’t make me feel like I have a disability anymore.”

“Having people who understand you and wanting to work here are two very different things, Harry,” Zayn points out, staring down at him.

Harry stares right back up. Zayn remembers there was a time at the beginning when Harry was shy and self-conscious, and he would never look at anyone in the eyes for more than a couple seconds. Now he’s there holding Zayn’s gaze. “I know,” Harry says, “But you do understand me, and I’m not talking about understanding how my brain works. You understand _me_ , Zayn. And I can’t ignore that. Just like I can’t ignore that I believe in what Haruspex does and wanna help for real,” he takes a breath. “If you think that I’d be useless as a _real_ member of your team, though, that’s another matter entirely.”

“No, Harry, what?” Zayn exclaims, because his insides are doing something funny in his belly at Harry’s words. “I don’t think that! Jesus Christ, I had _nothing_ before finding you. You alone have been more useful to our research than anyone since Haruspex has been founded.”

Harry sighs. “And yet we still have nothing. No leads, no clues on Oracle, and no idea how my brain does what it does.”

Zayn puts a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “We’ll get there. Tests and analyses take time, babe. It took me three years just to _find_ you, you can’t expect results on this in less than six months.”

Harry chuckles. Zayn doesn’t find it in his heart to remove his hand from Harry’s shoulder, though, because Harry’s there looking up at him, and his eyes are so green, and _stop Zayn he’s practically a civilian and you’re working and this person should only be a help and a resource, nothing more. But he isn’t, is he? You like him. All your friends see it clearly in your mind._

“I never said congratulations for your graduation,” Zayn says, hoping it’ll break the moment.

It doesn’t. Harry keeps staring up at him, one dimple showing. “Thanks, Zayn,” he says quietly.

Zayn is conscious that he’s lowering down to be closer to Harry. He’s conscious that Harry’s brain on the screen is emitting higher, quicker brainwaves. He’s conscious of the fact that Harry is tilting his head up more, like he wants to meet Zayn halfway.

He’s conscious that they’re about to kiss.

But they never do, because right in that moment, the door bangs open, and Niall, Liam and Louis burst in with a big cake, singing _Congratulations to you, congratulations to you, congratulations on your graduation, congratulations to you_ to the theme of _Happy Birthday_.

Zayn quickly gets away from Harry, desperately concentrating on raising his own mind shield, so pitiful and wobbly and debilitating to make compared to Harry’s perfect Aegis. But he makes it, because he doesn’t feel like sharing that moment with his friends yet.

Harry is a bit dumbfounded, but he sits up and carefully removes the sensors from his temples, smiling and thanking the lads for the cake.

Louis isn’t fooled, though, because he pats Zayn on the shoulder. _Sorry, mate_ , he tells Zayn with his mind, reaching him anyway because Zayn’s shield sucks right now, _It was a shit idea anyway. He’s not gonna be here at Haruspex forever, Zayn. You should start to deal with that while you still can._

+

They go to a disco downtown, and for the whole trip in Liam’s car, Harry can’t stop thinking about him and Zayn almost kissing.

He feels jittery with nerves and he kinda wants to giggle, but he manages to keep his composure, because the rest of the lads might not be able to read his mind, but they’re still ace at reading him, _period_. And he doesn’t feel like sharing that moment with anyone else yet.

He glances at Zayn through the rear-view mirror, and their eyes meet. Zayn smiles, although not that brightly.

Sometimes Harry really hates not being able to read minds, because he can’t ever understand what Zayn is thinking. He knows it’s wrong, because mind reading shouldn’t be a thing. He’s thought about it for five months, now, and what he told Zayn earlier is true. He now really believes Haruspex is doing the right thing, by wanting to get rid of the Disease, and he will gladly make it his personal mission even more than he’s already done.

He knows that maybe Zayn and the lads don’t think he could be useful as a real member of the team. They say he’s useful now, but Harry is really only letting them do tests on him, and that’s hardly _doing something_ for Harry. But he knows there has to be something he can do, _actively_ do, to help them. He’s glad his _will_ to help was enough for the Director to accept his application to become a real member of Haruspex. The lads don’t know yet, but Harry will tell them soon.

He hopes they’ll be happy, because as for what concerns Harry, he isn’t sure there’s anything he would dread more than the possibility of never seeing Zayn again.

But it’s not just Zayn, not entirely. Harry wouldn’t willingly get neck-deep in the Haruspex thing just for a bloke, no matter how much he likes him. It’s more. It’s what Harry _wants_ to do. It’s the purpose he’s lacked his whole life.

Liam parks the car a block away from their chosen disco, and they walk there. Just as they’re waiting in line to be let in by the bouncers, Zayn grabs Harry by an arm. “Harry, you have your… like, your ear things, right?”

Harry chuckles. “Yes, Zayn,” he just says, tucking his hair behind his ear so Zayn can see the small buds stuck in his eardrums. Those things have honestly saved Harry’s life, probably, and he blesses Niall daily for making them. They don’t impair his hearing, not in the slightest, but they tune down the noises, reducing them to _normal_ sounds.

Harry wonders if they’ll ever discover why the Immunes have that kind of hearing trouble. He briefly thinks about little Mariya Petrova and her shitty parents. He wonders how she does it, if the loud noises bother her, if she also thinks she’s disabled for not being able to read minds. He wishes he could speak to her just once, to reassure her and get rid of the worries he himself had five months earlier.

They get inside the club, and Niall immediately takes care of ordering a first round of drinks and shoving something pink-coloured in Harry’s hand. “To Harry!” he shouts, raising his glass.

Harry laughs as they all do the same, even Zayn, who never shouts. It’s quite comforting, thinking that these people were supposed to only see Harry as a resource or something, and yet here they are, throwing him a graduation party. Well, not really a party, just taking him out to dance. But the feeling is the same. They’re doing it for _him_.

Louis, Liam and Niall immediately vanish on the dance floor, swallowed by the darkness and the strobe lights.

Harry and Zayn stay a bit at the bar, finishing their drinks and talking about blissfully unrelated-to-Haruspex things. Zayn tells him about his family, about his little sister just about to finish high school, and that she wants to do medicine afterwards. Harry chuckles. “Gonna be a little mad mind scientist like her big brother,” he comments, clinking his glass against Zayn’s.

Zayn laughs. “Babe, if I’m lucky, there won’t be any need for mind scientists anymore by the time Safaa graduates,” he says.

Harry takes a sip. “What happens to Haruspex? Like, when we get rid of the Disease?”

Harry sees Zayn smile a bit more brightly when he hears Harry talking about _when_ and not _if_. “It gets dismantled,” Zayn says, shrugging. “It won’t be needed anymore.”

“What about _you_?” Harry almost shrieks “Are you gonna be… unemployed?” _And me too?_ , he doesn’t add.

Zayn laughs. “Yeah, babe. I’ll find a nice little job in a hospital where I’ll be the _normal_ neurologist I’ve always wanted to be, with a normal job and sleep schedule, and I’ll be able to talk about my work to my mother without omitting or telling little white lies.”

Zayn says it cheerfully, but he sounds a bit sad, like that small thing is close to a mirage for him. But the Disease will have to be destroyed sooner or later, right? Harry has decided he wants to confide in that. He clinks his glass against Zayn’s again, and downs the last sip of his drink. “You will,” he assures Zayn, “Wanna dance?”

“I don’t really… like, I don’t really dance,” Zayn kinda stutters. He never does.

Harry takes it as a victory, that Zayn is fazed by thinking about dancing with Harry. “Well, I don’t really go out with friends, and yet here I am,” he declares. “I’ll give you five minutes while I go to the loo. Then we dance,” he adds, and goes to find a restroom.

“Harry?” someone calls him when he’s almost there.

He turns, and frowns a little when he clearly sees Nick, with a drink in his hand and half-lidded eyes. “Harry!” Nick shouts, hugging him and probably spilling half his drink on Harry’s back, if the cold and wet sensation he feels is anything to go by. “Where the _hell_ have you been lately? I was thinking about giving you a call tomorrow!”

Harry does his best to smile politely. It’s not that he doesn’t like Nick. But he’s a bit of a slag, if Harry’s honest, and Harry has started being kinda tired of Nick always trying to check in Harry’s mind if he has a chance with him, only to come up short every time even if he _knows_ he can’t read Harry’s mind, and then asking questions about it every single time. “Yeah,” he just says, “I was busy.”

Nick looks around. “I actually have something to tell you, Haz,” he says, suddenly looking more serious and vigilant, “But not here. Come,” he adds, and then grabs Harry, pulling him into the men’s restroom.

Nick closes the principal door leading into the loo, and Harry suddenly feels worry creep up his spine. Why is he locking the door? “What is it, Nick?” he asks, using the months and months of training to appear calm and collected.

Nick sighs. “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a long time, Haz. But I couldn’t.”

Harry suppresses an eyeroll. Is he about to ask him to go out again? “Tell me what?” he sighs.

“About me,” Nick says. “I, um, this is gonna sound really crazy, but I have been working for these people in the last year, and it’s kind of a secret, but now they told me I could tell you.”

Harry feels his stomach turn unpleasantly. “What people?”

Nick sighs. “I’m like you, Harry,” he says at last, “I’m an Immune. I’m sorry I never told you and pretended to want to read your mind, but I had to make sure you were like me, and not just someone absurdly rich taking Shield.”

Harry feels his legs about to give up, and he carefully leans a hip against one of the sinks, not to show it. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying, Nick. You’re drunk,” he says.

Nick chuckles. “Yeah, yeah. I know it doesn’t make sense. You know about the Shield, right? The pills?”

“They’re a legend,” Harry lies.

Nick shakes his head and gets closer to Harry, grabbing him by the shoulders. “No, Hazza, it’s real. The people I work with, they make it and sell it to the highest bidder. I’m special to them, because I’m an Immune, and they need my bone marrow to make the Shield.”

Harry’s heart thumps unevenly and threatens to jump out of his chest. _He’s Immune #4. Nick is Immune #4. I have to tell Zayn. I have to tell Zayn_.

“How do they make something like that from your bone marrow?” Harry asks, trying to sound just a bit astonished and sceptical.

Nick shrugs. “I dunno. They extract it and they make the pills. Their scientists say the shield we have in our minds has something to do with our bone marrow, I never listen to their rambles,” he shakes his head. “Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that my organisation, we’re called Oracle, they asked me to talk to you. We could use another Immune, Harry. It’s crazy, what they do there. Do you wanna join? They pay well, I promise.”

Harry shakes his head. “Nick, you know I’m afraid of needles,” he says, lying, but Nick won’t know, because Nick doesn’t _know Harry_ , “I don’t think there’s enough money to convince me to let someone extract my bone marrow regularly.”

Nick shakes his head. He looks feverish, his eyes wide, and Harry would think he’s high or drunk if he didn’t already know everything Nick’s saying is true. “I’m not talking about money, Harry. They give me pills. _Another_ kind of pills.”

Harry frowns. “What pills?”

“They’re called Delphi. They let Immunes read minds, Harry,” Nick whispers. “They unblock us, alright? I mean, not completely. I still can’t read another Immune’s mind or be read by an Immune. But I can read _anybody else_ , Harry, and _be_ read. I can use telepathy. It’s so fucking _cool_ , Haz, you have no idea,” Nick giggles.

Harry’s stomach is sending waves of nausea up his throat. _I have to tell Zayn. Zayn. Zayn._

“They asked me to see if you wanted to join us. They’re gonna give you your own stash of Delphi, you’ll see,” Nick sniffles, a rivet of sweat running down his temple. “It feels a bit like ecstasy, I won’t lie. But it’s so cool, reading minds. And the Delphi gets rid of the sounds, too. Don’t they drive you crazy? The sounds, Haz?”

Harry nods. “Yeah,” he says, blessing Niall’s in-ears again, and the fact that his hair hides it perfectly. “And if I don’t wanna join?” he asks then, controlling a shiver rising up his spine. _Calm and collected. Relax. Don’t let your hands shake. Don’t be too rigid. Don’t show it_. These are the things Liam has taught him. Harry follows them.

Nick shrugs. “Nothing,” he says, “You lose the occasion of your fucking life, and that’s it.”

_There’s something wrong. There’s no way Oracle would let me have all this info and then just let me go if I don’t join them. There’s something wrong. What is it?_

“What do you say, Harry?” Nick asks, “Here. Take a pill. They gave it to me, for you. To let you have a taste.”

_Oh, hell fucking no_ , Harry thinks, but he smiles. “Okay. Let me try it. And then I’ll tell you.”

Nick nods enthusiastically. “Okay then. I’ll give you the pill, and then we can dance a little. I’ve missed you, Haz. You’re still fit.”

Harry keeps smiling. He can’t take the pill from Nick and then disappear. He doesn’t know if Nick’s alone in the disco, they could be watched. He needs to act natural.

Nick produces a little plastic bag with one green pill inside. “Take it,” he tells Harry.

Harry opens the plastic bag, and slowly, very slowly takes the pill out, waiting until Nick is impatiently bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Come on,” Nick urges him.

Harry nods, and puts the pill in his mouth, quickly pushing it under his tongue, and then mimicking gulping down. _Please believe me please stop looking before this fucking thing melts._

Nick giggles. “Let’s dance,” he says, and grabs Harry’s hand, pulling him out of the restroom.

As soon as Nick gives him his back, Harry spits the pill back in the plastic bag, and stuffs it in his pocket. _I need Zayn. But I can’t leave. I gotta dance with him for a while. Pretend I’m high. Pretend I’m reading minds_.

So that’s what Harry does. As he walks behind Nick, making sure the plastic bag is safe in his pocket, his hand wraps around his wallet, and he remembers what he has inside of it. So Harry grabs a hold of the small packet, and dances with Nick Grimshaw.

+

Zayn would like to say he isn’t bothered by what he sees, but he fucking is.

Because Harry apparently ran into fucking Nick, and he’s now dancing with him like he doesn’t even remember Zayn exists. Zayn looks at him swerve his hips and move his head and his curls to the beat, and he has to restrain himself not to break the glass in his hand.

Louis, Niall and Liam find him there, half an hour later. “Zayn? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Louis says.

Zayn shrugs and scoffs. “Nope. Just Harry being a slag with his slag friend.”

“That’s not fair, Zed,” Niall mutters, “That Nick bloke might be a slag, but Harry isn’t.”

“Then who’s dancing like they’ve been fucking _paid_ for it?” Zayn snarls, pointing at Harry with his head.

They all see Harry and Nick, crotches rubbing and hands going up and down each other’s sides. Harry's hands are under Nick’s shirt. “Oh, fuck,” Liam sighs.

“Yeah,” Zayn retorts. “I wanna go home. I’ll take the bus. Make sure Nick doesn’t fuck the Aegis out of his brains,” he adds, because he wants to be mean.

They don’t reply, but they don’t move to let him pass when he stands up either. After a moment, Zayn understands why they’re frozen.

Harry is coming towards them, and Zayn doesn’t see Nick in the crowd dancing, because everybody is so crammed they look like fucking sardines, and Harry is grimacing as he makes his way himself.

“Zayn,” he says when he reaches them, “Zayn we have to go now.”

Zayn scoffs. “Not having enough fun?”

Harry blinks, then gapes and his face goes a dark red. “No! Fuck, no, you don’t understand, I…”

“I think I understand, Harry,” Zayn replies, “It’s okay. You’re an adult and a free man, and you can choose to dance with whomever you want. Separate work and private life, and all that shit,” he adds, and he knows he sounds petulant and he’s making a fool of himself in front of his friends and colleagues, but he’s had a couple drinks too, and he can’t help it.

He feels betrayed and cheated on, and he doesn’t have a right to feel either.

Harry’s gaze closes off, and he punches Zayn in the shoulder. “Can you _stop_ being mean and _listen_ to me?” he hisses, grunts.

Zayn frowns, because only then does he look at Harry in the eyes, and he sees things he’s never seen in them before.

Fear. Worry. Anger. Panic.

_I would die to be able to read your mind right now_ , Zayn thinks.

The urgency in Harry’s eyes has been noticed by the lads as well, because Niall gently grabs Harry by an arm. “Hazza? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Nick!” Harry hisses, “We have to _go_ before he finds me again. It’s Nick, Zayn. Nick is Immune #4.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you're thinking :)
> 
> I am also on Tumblr as wont-you-stay-till-the-am.tumblr.com, come hit me up if you wanna talk.


	3. Delphi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re doing things to me,” Zayn chuckles, “And I’m not sure they’re good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual disclaimer: I don't know or own any of the characters present in this work. I only own the plot and the original characters.

Zayn feels like shit for the strop he threw when he saw Harry and Nick dance, now that he knows Harry was doing the only thing he fucking could.

His hands shake as they run back to Haruspex, and Harry tells them what he’s found out talking to Nick. Zayn can’t fucking believe it.

_This is huge. This is crazy. And Harry found it out all by himself. He risked his fucking life tonight, while I was having a drink and sulking because I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to be a_ thing _._

“I marked him,” Harry says at last, tormenting the rings on his fingers. They’re all sitting in Zayn’s studio. “I marked him with the invisible traceable ink Niall made a month ago. I had some in my wallet because Niall made travel packets. So while we were dancing, I opened it and smeared it on his side under his shirt.”

Louis laughs victoriously, and gives Harry a smacking kiss on the forehead. “You’re a genius, Hazza, my Hazza,” he says.

Harry ignores the compliment. Zayn can see that he’s still upset, not looking at him, when all Zayn wants is for Harry to _look_ at him. Because Zayn can’t read his mind, but at least, if he looked at him, he could try to read his eyes.

Harry finally takes out the pill. Delphi, it’s called, he said. That’s the first time anyone at Haruspex hears about it. Zayn thinks Oracle probably just started producing them, but he can’t fathom why. The Immunes are so rare, how can Oracle profit from selling to _them_?

Harry gives the little plastic bag with the green pill to Louis. “I hope it’s not melted. I had to pretend to swallow it.”

Louis shakes his head as he looks at it. “It’s here, it’s whole. I can run tests on this.”

“Nick said Oracle is the one producing the Shield,” Harry keeps speaking. “And that they need bone marrow from an Immune to do that. There’s something wrong, something _missing_ , though. Right, Zayn?”

Zayn starts a little when Harry talks to him so directly. He knows Harry’s angry. But Harry, like a good Haruspex recruit, is putting the cause before his own personal desires and grudges.

So Zayn clears his throat, and nods. “Yes. I can’t believe Oracle would send Nick to tell you all this info, and that then they would let you go if you just decided not to join them, and with a sample of Delphi, even. It’s stupid, no one would do that.”

“Nick doesn’t know I work for Haruspex. Or, well, that I’m a _resource_ at Haruspex,” Harry points out, his tone going bitter. “So maybe it just… slipped his mouth? Like, he told me more than he should have?”

Liam shakes his head. “I don’t know, Harry. I’m sure Oracle has their own means to make sure their recruits do as they say. Whatever Nick told you, _they_ wanted you to know it. And I think it’s because they _know_ you work with us, and they wanted you to switch sides.”

Harry scoffs. “As if I’d ever dream of doing that.”

He says it with such certainty and conviction that Zayn’s heart breaks a little. _He’s one of us_ , he realizes, and for the first time, he has absolutely no doubts.

Harry sighs. “Run tests on that pill. Maybe the way it’s made can tell us something about how Shield is made as well,” he says quietly, “We never managed to get our hands on an actual pill of Shield, after all. It might be easier with the Delphi.”

Louis nods. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m gonna start running tests now. Harry?”

Harry hums.

“You weren’t tempted to take this for real, were you?” Louis asks, seriously.

Harry blinks, and Zayn has a heart attack, until he finally shakes his head. “No. The only thing I could think was that I needed to tell Zayn about what I found out. The thought of taking it never crossed my mind. First of all, my mother raised me with ‘stranger danger’ and ‘never accept candy from unknown sources’. I sent ‘stranger danger’ to fuck itself the second I chose to get in Zayn’s car and let him talk to me five months ago,” he chuckles a little, “But they’ll never catch me with the candy stunt.”

Liam chuckles. “Good call, Haz.”

“Besides,” Harry adds, “I don’t think I want to read anyone’s thoughts anymore. And most importantly, I want mine to be mine, and mine alone. So the Delphi has literally zero appeal to me right now.”

Louis nods. “Okay. Okay. I needed you to say it out loud.”

Harry smiles. “Cheers, Lou. For worrying about me.”

“Always, my Hazza,” Louis assures, and then sends Zayn a glance. _You fucked up big time with him_ , he tells Zayn with his mind, because he knows Zayn won’t be trying to block his own.

Zayn doesn’t move. _I know. I was tipsy and jealous. How do I fix it?_

_Say sorry to him. But be careful what you do. I don’t know if this will change anything, but we still have to consider Harry’s here at Haruspex only temporarily. And if he goes, I don’t want you to be heartbroken._

Zayn chuckles bitterly. _It’s a bit too late for that, I think, Lou_.

Louis doesn’t reply, and just looks a bit pitifully at Zayn before going away to examine the pill.

Zayn looks at Liam. “We have to make sure Mariya, George, Alex and Lyla are safe,” he says. “If Oracle approached Harry, we can’t exclude they’ll do the same with other Immunes. Get in contact with their families. And as for Mariya, send a team to pick her up. I don’t trust her parents on this one,” he then looks at Niall, “And start tracking down Nick Grimshaw through the ink. We need his whereabouts so maybe they’ll guide us to Oracle.”

Liam and Niall nod and leave the room, and Zayn doesn’t miss the small smile on Harry’s face at his mention of finally getting Mariya Petrova out of her parents’ exploiting hands. He doesn’t know if Haruspex will really have that kind of power, but he can hope Liam will manage.

When Niall and Liam are gone as well, Zayn’s studio is quiet, neither he nor Harry speaking.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Zayn musters bollocks enough to say at last, without raising his eyes from his own knees. “It wasn’t my place.”

“But I wish it was, Zayn,” Harry replies firmly.

Zayn raises his head, very quickly, and he knows he’s gaping. Harry is there, standing in front of him with his jaw set, and he keeps speaking once he has Zayn’s full attention. “I wish it was your place, because I really don’t think you need to read my mind to know that I fancy you, and more than a little, even. But you always put distance between us, and I had come to terms with the fact that you didn’t think the same about me,” Harry licks his own lips, and it distracts Zayn, but not enough that he stops listening. “Until today, here, when we almost kissed. I thought you got this, Zayn. Why would you even fucking _think_ I’d want to be with anyone else?”

“Because it would be better for you,” Zayn says, standing up as well, “Because I don’t like the idea, but you’d be better off without someone like _me_. And because you’re not part of Haruspex, not yet and not really at least for now, and I don’t know if they’re gonna let you stay for long. And once they send you away, we won’t be allowed to see each other again. And I don’t know if I can take it, if we ever become _more_.”

Harry chuckles. “And you just think that it’ll be that easy? For me to just fucking _stop_ seeing you?”

“It doesn’t depend on you, babe. You will have to.”

“I choose not to,” Harry replies stubbornly. “I chose to stay. And if you fucking _spoke_ to me about what you felt, I wouldn’t have waited to show you this,” he adds, and then throws something at Zayn.

Zayn catches it by sheer reflex, and his stomach flips when he sees the thin black cord to which a plastic badge is attached. It has Harry’s mugshot, and it reads _Harry Edward Styles – Immunology Dept._

Zayn can’t fucking believe his eyes. “They _hired_ you?” he asks, “When?”

“Today,” Harry shrugs, “I talked to the Director, and he said that of course Haruspex needs an Immune in their payroll. That’s it. I didn’t tell you and the lads yet ‘cause I wanted to have a proper speech about it after our night out, talk a little about how much I believe in the cause, and hope it would be enough to get at least a snog from you,” he says, grinning a little.

Zayn chuckles and shakes his head, still looking at Harry’s badge. “And I was thinking and overthinking about what the fuck I’d do when you would leave.”

Harry takes a step towards Zayn. “You should just have spoken to me, Zayn. I can’t read your fucking mind. But I don’t want to. What I can read in your eyes right now is more than enough.”

Zayn nods, taking a step himself. “It’s frankly a bit frustrating, that I can’t read your mind.”

“Tough luck,” Harry sighs.

Zayn doesn’t reply. He just grabs Harry by his shirt and yanks him closer, knocking their lips together and not bothering to shield the litany of _we’re kissing he wants me too he wants to stay he’s gonna stay_ in his mind, because he doesn’t need debilitating shields with Harry.

Harry sighs and opens his mouth, keeping Zayn’s face in place by cupping his jaws. He hums questioningly, and Zayn knows he said something out loud, so he hums back in the same way.

Harry sighs. “You just said something about not having to shield yourself.”

Zayn nods. “Yeah. It’s so fucking tiring, it gives me headaches. But I don’t have to, with you.”

Harry smiles and kisses Zayn again, his hands sliding under Zayn’s shirt, his blunt nails scratching his sides a little bit. “Five fucking months,” Harry murmurs on Zayn’s lips, “Five fucking months and I thought you never even looked at me.”

“But I did,” Zayn assures, “I did. All the time. And I looked tonight as well, and I was going mad with jealousy even if I knew I didn’t have any right to do that.”

Harry stops kissing Zayn for a moment, and he looks at him in the eyes. “Do you want to? Have a right to do that?” he asks. “Because I’m not sure I can do a one-off, with you, Zayn. I don’t do them in general, but with you especially. So if that’s all you want, this can’t happen.”

Zayn shakes his head so hard he feels his topknot wobble. “No, Harry, fuck, I don’t need a night of sex, that was never the point. I want _you_ , and I want you all the fucking time, starting now.”

Harry smiles. “Okay,” he just says, and then surges forward to capture Zayn’s lips in a kiss again.

Zayn knows they can’t do much more, not at Haruspex and in Zayn’s own lab, but it’s enough, just being able to finally touch Harry for more than a fucking mind test, and to be able to kiss him and know Harry wants to kiss him too, possibly for a long time.

Despite that, Zayn can feel himself fatten up in his jeans, and when Harry groans and bucks his hips, trapping Zayn against the table, he can feel Harry is also half-hard. “You have a bunk bed downstairs, don’t you?” Harry asks in a murmur, his lips hovering over Zayn’s pulse point.

Zayn nods, his dick growing even harder. “Yeah,” he breathes.

Harry nods too. “I think we should go there. Now. Because I’m losing my fucking mind, have been for five months. So I think I deserve that you fuck my brains out now.”

Zayn shivers, and he almost whimpers when Harry cups his dick through his jeans. He digs his fingers in Harry’s shoulder, and he doesn’t know if it’s to stop him until they reach the bunk bed, or because he wants to spur him on and just have his way with him on the table of the lab.

Harry understands Zayn’s stupid dilemma, because he grins, and the next moment he’s going down on his knees, staring up at Zayn and slowly fumbling with Zayn’s belt. “A bit of foreplay before we go,” Harry says carelessly, “Foreplay never hurt anyone.”

A moment later, Zayn is very glad Harry doesn’t manage to unzip his jeans, because the door bangs open, and Liam barges into the room.

Harry squeals and trips in his haste to stand back up. Liam screams and immediately covers his eyes. Zayn shouts an incredibly long profanity about his friends never fucking knocking.

“Sorry, sorry,” Liam says, slowly uncovering his eyes.

It would be even funny, if Zayn didn’t get a wave of worry and fear from Liam’s mind. _Leeyum? What’s wrong?_ , he asks, before remembering Harry can’t hear them.

Liam shakes his head. “It’s Mariya Petrova,” he says out loud.

Harry’s face goes pale. “What?”

Liam takes a harsh breath. “We contacted her parents. They said some people offered them a huge amount of money just to let Mariya swallow a single green pill, so they accepted it and gave the Delphi to the kid. But they said she’s not feeling well and they don’t know what’s wrong with her in the hospital. The Director told them Haruspex is about to go fetch Mariya and bring her here to our headquarters. The jet’s about to take off.”

Harry has never moved more quickly as he hauls his jacket from a chair and ties his hair in a bun. “I’m coming with you,” he declares.

Liam opens his mouth, but Harry just thrusts his brand new badge on Liam’s chest. “I’m officially Haruspex, Liam. I don’t wanna hear it.”

Liam gapes and then looks at Zayn. Zayn, despite the worry he’s feeling, grins at Liam. “He’s staying, and he’s bossy about it,” he just comments, shrugging on his own jacket and following them, “I’m coming too.”

Liam nods, and Zayn can feel his relief and happiness as they run to the lift. _So he’s really staying?_ , he asks Zayn.

Zayn nods. _Yeah. He wanted to tell us while we were out, but then Immune #4 fucked everything up. And me. I might also have fucked it up a little._

_So you two can be a real thing, now?_

Zayn chuckles. _We’ll see. It seems so._

_Then, new rule. No blowjobs in our shared spaces._

Zayn rolls his eyes. _That’s_ my _studio, Liam, and you shouldn’t have such an easy access to it all the time._

“Stop mind-speaking,” Harry says with an eyeroll of his own when the lift reaches the basement, where the jet is waiting for them. “And no, Liam, we won’t _not_ give each other head in Zayn’s studio just ‘cause you’re there all the time.”

Liam gapes. “How did you…”

Harry laughs. “I don’t need mind reading to know what you think, my friend. You’re all quite easy to read.”

+

The flight to Saint Petersburg lasts about three hours, and when they land, Harry has to do his best not to just fucking run to the hospital where they’ve been informed Mariya Petrova is.

When they get there, they’re showed to her room despite it being the middle of the night, and he kinda blesses Haruspex for its power.

“What’s wrong with her?” Zayn asks the doctor who leads them through a corridor in the children ward.

The doctor shakes his head. “We don’t know,” he replies, “The symptoms are the ones of a mental breakdown, we had to sedate her. She was screaming and sweating, and she was weirdly only speaking English and asking for people that she never met.”

“Who?” Harry asks.

The doctor shakes his head again. “Someone called Harry, or something of the sorts.”

They all exchange a glance. How does Mariya even _know_ his name? They have never spoken to her, only to her parents, and Harry somehow doubts the parents would tell the kid anything about all this. Did she read his messages by herself? Harry doesn't know, and it's frustrating.

The doctor lets them into a room, and Harry is taken aback when he sees just how _small_ Mariya looks in that bed. She has a halo of long, blonde hair around her head, spread on the pillow, and she’s just wearing a tiny hospital gown. She’s awake and shaking, her skin coated in sweat, and even if she doesn’t seem like she’s about to throw a fit, her wrists and ankles are restrained to the bed. She’s not alone in the room. Her parents are sitting by the wall, far from her, and they kinda look at her like she has some sort of disease. Harry hates them.

He lets Liam and Zayn approach the parents, because they speak Russian, and because he doesn’t even want to deal with them. Instead, he slowly approaches Mariya, trying to smile and not scare her.

She blinks. “Harry,” she says, “You came.”

Her English sounds very foreign, but she’s speaking it anyway, and she recognizes Harry. He nods, and carefully sits on the edge of the bed. “Yes, Mariya,” he replies. “How do you know me?”

She gulps down some air, still shaking. “I read… the notes. From the money my parents get for me. There were letters with them. From you. Telling them to be careful with me, to treat me right. I looked for your name in Internet. I study English in school. I got better so I can understand you. They don’t, Harry. Treat me right. I’m dying.”

Harry takes a deep breath, and he grabs one of Mariya’s restrained hands. “No, you’re not,” he promises her. “We’re here to take you to England. And make you better. That okay?”

Mariya nods frantically. “I wanna go away from here. The sounds, Harry. The sounds are so loud. My head hurts. It hurts.”

Harry still has his in-ears in place, but he frowns, because he knows the sounds can’t be too loud even for normal Immune ears. _There’s something wrong_ , he thinks. He doesn’t have to communicate telepathically with the other lads to know they’re listening and they agree with him.

“You’re not gonna take her away,” Mariya’s father says in a broken, foreign English.

Harry turns to face him. “As a matter of fact, I am, Mr. Petrova,” he says, “This girl needs treatment that can’t be provided by any normal hospital, and frankly, you are _shit_ at being parents, so even if I didn’t have the power to take her away, I would call social services on you.”

Mariya’s mother gasps, and Harry hears Mariya herself chuckle a little. She then says something in Russian.

“She said she wants to go with Harry,” Liam translates for Harry.

Harry nods. “You can let us take care of Mariya, or you can be arrested. What’s it gonna be?” he asks. He’s bluffing, because Haruspex _doesn’t_ have the power of taking Mariya away without her parents’ consent, but he hopes to scare them enough to let them all go.

It works. They sigh, and then Mr. Petrova just waves his hand. “Do what you have to. The money wasn’t good anymore anyway. There’s something wrong with her.”

“Yes. Her parents,” Harry replies in a mutter, and then bends over Mariya to loosen the restraints enough to be able to take her up in his arms.

She goes willingly, and she pets his hair a little. “Don’t be mad, Harry,” she pants. “You came. You saved me. Am I gonna live?”

Harry nods surely. “Of course, doll. You’re gonna be fine,” he promises.

But deep down, he knows there are no guarantees for that either. Not until they figure out what is really wrong with Mariya.

+

Mariya falls asleep as soon as the jet takes off, snuggled in Harry’s lap and with her face against his chest, still shivering, but a bit less now that she’s wrapped in layers of clothes plus Harry’s jacket.

Zayn looks at him for a while before speaking, in a murmur. “You didn’t tell me you were attaching threatening letters to the money when I let you take care of the transfers,” he says, but it’s not mad, just wondering.

Harry sighs. “They weren’t _that_ threatening,” he amends, “Just, like, advice. On what they should do if the Immune problems became too much for Mariya. Like, what to do to dull the sounds. And what to do if the tests we ran on her wore her out too much. It’s things no one could know apart from me, because I lived the same things. This little girl is like _me_ , Zayn. I gotta take care of her,” he says slowly. “And yes, I might have written a line or two about the fact they should treat her right ‘cause otherwise I’d know and go to Russia at once, but that’s beside the point.”

Zayn chuckles. “What did she tell you? When she was still in the hospital?”

“Nothing much. Just that the sounds were hurting her. There almost weren’t any sounds, Zayn. It’s not normal.”

“Do you think it’s the Delphi?” Liam asks.

Harry shakes his head. “She started not feeling well after they made her take the Delphi, yeah. But it’s weird, isn’t it? Nick was fine with it. He looked like he’d just snorted a kilo of coke, but he was fine. He also said the Delphi _gets rid_ of the sounds. No, this has to be something else. But I don’t know what.”

Zayn quietly stands up to go sit next to Harry, and he gently places a hand on his knee. “We’re gonna figure this out, babe. I promise. As soon as we get to Haruspex, I’m gonna run all the tests I can think of on Mariya, and our medical team is gonna help. We’ll fix her.”

“Harry?” Mariya calls out in a slurred tone, snuffling and then raising her head from Harry’s chest.

Harry smiles. “I’m here.”

“They gave me more,” she says, making Harry’s insides churn. “He gave me a syringe. The bad man. The one who is like me and always chews gum with open mouth.”

Harry has to do his best not to start shaking in anger. “Nick?”

Mariya nods. “ _Da_. Nick. He said it does not hurt, but it does. In my back.”

Zayn immediately leans forward, and Harry kicks him to stop him. “Mariya? Can Zayn check your back?”

Mariya looks at Zayn. “Stranger danger,” she says, her eyes narrowing. “You wrote in the letter. For me.”

Harry chuckles, remembering the stupid line he wrote in the useless attempt to warn Mariya against Oracle. Apparently, it wasn’t useless, and Mariya had read and listened. “Yeah,” he replies, “But Zayn is not a stranger, okay? He’s a friend. And Liam too. They are my friends, and yours.”

Mariya deliberates a little in her mind, which none of them can read, and then nods, leaning with her face against Harry’s chest and baring her little back for Zayn.

“ _Spasiba_ , doll,” Zayn says, and slowly lifts her sweaters and t-shirt.

Harry holds his breath when he sees Mariya’s back. There’s a huge bruise on it, right in the middle of her spine, and Harry can clearly see two puncture wounds, quite big, in the centre.

“How the f… hell did the doctors not notice?” Liam hisses.

Harry has an answer to that. “Because they did. There’s no way they wouldn’t notice. They got paid not to tell us. They didn’t imagine we would take Mariya away. They tried to make a fuss about it, didn’t they?” he says. Liam nods, because he’s been the one talking to the doctors to get Mariya out of the hospital.

“This looks like a puncture from a needle for _extracting_. Her bone marrow. They took it,” Zayn says as low as he can while he examines Mariya’s back. “But they also injected her with something afterwards. I can see some residue on her skin, it looks like a viscous substance, something…”

Mariya starts to scream. She wails and presses her face into Harry’s chest, shouting something in Russian. Harry doesn’t know what’s happening, but at the same time, Zayn and Liam cover their ears, their legs faltering.

Harry doesn’t think Mariya is screaming that loud.

“She’s screaming with her mind as well,” Zayn gasps, “It’s deafening, it’s like she’s in my fucking head.”

Mariya is still screaming in Russian. Liam is the first to recover, and he looms over Zayn, grabbing him by a shoulder. “Your shield!” he screams. “Now! Make it!”

Harry thinks he’s never seen Liam speak so coldly, like he’s _ordering_ something. He almost wants to rip him away from Zayn when he realizes how _hard_ Liam is digging his fingers into his shoulder. Like he _wants_ to hurt him.

_The shield we make. It’s painful_ , Zayn has said more than once.

Harry doesn’t move, because he knows Liam wouldn’t be so harsh if he could help it, and then Zayn raises his eyes to him, and nods, closing his eyes. He sees him pant, gasp and sweat, and after a moment Zayn opens his eyes again.

He’s still breathing raggedly, but he seems fine.

“What is she saying?” Harry asks, with Mariya still whining a little.

Liam sits down. “She’s saying that she can hear all our voices in her head,” he tells Harry.

Zayn nods. “And we can hear her,” he adds. “Her Aegis, Harry. Her Aegis is damaged.”

+

It turns out Zayn is right. When they get to Haruspex and Zayn runs his usual tests on Mariya, Harry can clearly see in the brain scan that Mariya’s Aegis, small and orange, has a neat crack in the middle, like a thin crack in a wall.

“I think they gave her the pill to weaken her Aegis,” Zayn says grimly. “And then they extracted as much bone marrow as they could before injecting her with something that broke it. It’s probably the same substance of which the Delphi is made. I can see residual matter in her spine, and it’s green.”

Louis nods. “The pills are made with Immune bone marrow. The Aegis _starts_ in the bone marrow, apparently, and its cells are at their purest state in the spine. So when you extract Immune bone marrow, you also extract the very essence of an Aegis,” he explains, reading over his lab results. “They managed to turn those pure Aegis cells into pills. From those, they created the Shield, that’s why it blocks your mind. It’s like you’re swallowing a tiny little piece of Aegis. Then, they reversed the process. And that’s how they also created the Delphi.”

Harry’s mind is going a mile a minute as his mind connects the dots. “The kids’ Aegis is smaller. But Oracle didn’t know. So they tried to extract Mariya’s bone marrow, and when they realized it wasn’t enough, they deemed her unusable and tried to kill her by injecting her with the Delphi substance in its raw state.”

Zayn nods. “We have to find a way to shield her permanently,” he says, “Her brain is not wired to take the Disease, and if we don’t shield it, it’s gonna fry.”

Harry’s mind whirs. “The anti-cheating devices.”

The lads frown. “What?”

“Yes!” Harry exclaims, “The anti-cheating devices for exams. When I was in uni, it was mandatory to wear these devices, they’re government-made, and they block your mind so that you can’t use your telepathy while you’re doing exams. It’s like, a helmet, or something, I don’t know.”

“Yes,” Niall says, standing up, “Yeah, fucking hell, my _brother_ designed those. He works with the Ministry of Education. They’re still shit, though, there are ways around those devices and they don't work for long.”

“It's our best shot,” Zayn replies, “Can you replicate one, Niall? Make it a bit better for the kid?”

Niall nods. “I’m on it,” he says, and runs out the door.

Mariya is fast asleep, now, and Harry takes her in his arms to delicately place her on the small couch in Zayn’s studio. His brain is still whirring, still trying to come up with a solution.

But he doesn’t have enough data for that.

_And that’s exactly the problem_ , he thinks.

“Louis?” he asks.

Louis hums.

“Do you think there’s a way to make the Delphi selective? Like, to make it so that an Immune can only read and be read by _one_ single person?”

Louis frowns. “I guess so? It would have to be a mix of Immune bone marrow and bone marrow from this designated person, I suppose, but I guess it could be done?”

“Can you do it?”

“No.”

It’s not Louis who replies, but Zayn. He’s standing by the desk with his fists balled, and he’s shaking head to toe. “No,” he says again. “I know what you’re thinking of doing. Absolutely not.”

“Zayn, it’s the only way!” Harry hisses.

Louis looks between them, and then sighs. “I can’t understand the mind conversation you two are having, considering that I can’t read one party’s mind and the other is exceptionally still sporting a working shield. Liam must have been particularly scary.”

Harry takes one last look at Mariya’s sleeping frame, and then gestures to the door with his head.

They go out, into the deserted and dark cafeteria, and Louis quickly flicks a light switch to illuminate the corridor there.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

Zayn grunts. “Harry wants you to make the selective Delphi so that he can read my mind, and I can read his, and then he wants to go undercover at Oracle through Nick Grimshaw,” he declares.

Harry is a bit taken aback that Zayn has understood every detail of his plan even if he’s not able to read his mind. But Zayn has gotten that correctly, so he nods. “Yeah.”

He braces himself for Louis’s shrieks, but they never come. Louis just hums. “That’s actually a really good idea,” he just says.

Harry blinks. “Really?”

“Really,” Louis nods.

“It’s too dangerous!” Zayn hisses. “There are a _million_ things that could go wrong, and if they find you out and do to you what they did to Mariya, _you’re_ not gonna survive, Harry! Her brain is holding it together because she’s young. _Your_ brain wouldn’t take it!”

Harry feels cold sweat run down his back, but he doesn’t budge. “There’s always a million things that can go wrong with Haruspex and the Disease, Zayn,” he says. “But I’m the only one who can do this. Gather some more intel. And find a fucking solution before this mind-reading shit becomes a mass murder.”

Zayn looks at Harry in the eyes, and he looks angry, but Harry knows better. He’s scared, out of his mind. “I don’t want you to put yourself in such a danger,” he says, quietly.

Harry shakes his head. “I don’t think we have a choice, Zayn,” he answers, grabbing his hand and praying that Zayn won’t push him away.

He doesn’t, and he just tightens his fingers around Harry’s.

Louis sighs. “I’m gonna go bring the kid to her room upstairs in the med department,” he declares, “Get some sleep. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

+

There’s no one else in the bunk bed room where Zayn has his own spot. The room is fairly big, planned to host whomever in Haruspex needs to sleep in the building for whatever reason. There’s a group of unlabelled beds for one-timers, and then there’s a row of beds with names, for people like Zayn, who have to sleep in the building most of the time.

Zayn is grateful that the room is empty that night, because he needs to be with Harry, alone. It feels like they’ve never been alone before, and it feels like it’s bound to be the last time as well, because Harry has just decided to fuck off undercover like James fucking Bond, and Zayn is already worried out of his mind.

Harry takes one look at Zayn, and as it often happens, he doesn’t need to read his thoughts to know what Zayn is thinking. He sighs and sits on the bed labelled _Doc. Zayn J. Malik_ , looking up at Zayn when he does. He pats the bed a little, and Zayn heaves a sigh of his own before sitting next to Harry.

“Hazza, babe, this is just too fucking dangerous,” Zayn forces himself to speak first.

Harry nods. “I know. I know, Zayn. But it’s also the only choice we have. If you have a better plan in that big head o’ yours, please do tell,” he says with a small chuckle.

Zayn doesn’t have one. He _knows_ Harry is right, but he _doesn’t want_ him to be. He wants to keep Harry safe and sound, at Haruspex, next to him. He immediately realizes how selfish and stupid his thoughts are, and shakes his head. _What the fuck did this bloke do to you, that after all these years you’re here putting yourself before Haruspex?_

“You’re doing things to me,” Zayn chuckles, “And I’m not sure they’re good.”

Harry must understand what he means, because he laughs, and then gently lifts Zayn’s chin with his knuckles to make him look at him. “You started doing things to me the day we met. Literally doing things, with all the unrequested snogging and whatnot.”

Zayn, despite himself, laughs too. “Sorry about threatening your innocence,” he says, and maybe, deep down, he means it more than a joke. Harry has become a true soldier of Haruspex, in those months, Zayn thinks. There’s a hardness to him, a selflessness and a spirit of sacrifice Zayn knows weren’t there before.

Harry blinks, and stops laughing, his lips inching closer to Zayn. “I think I was never innocent to begin with, Zayn,” he murmurs in a low tone, and the next moment he’s straddling Zayn, and they’re kissing.

Zayn sighs and decides to let go, for once. He just savours the taste of Harry’s tongue in his mouth, and lets his hands run up and down Harry’s broad back, feeling the muscles shift and stretch when Harry starts to push at Zayn’s chest to make him lay down.

They struggle a little to get to the centre of the small, single bed, and there’s not even nearly enough space for two people in there, but Zayn doesn’t plan on letting Harry stop touching him and being all over him anyway. Harry seems to agree, because he immediately attacks Zayn’s neck, his hands frantically going to the buttons of Zayn’s shirt, undoing them one by one.

Zayn is not that patient, and he rips two of Harry’s own buttons in his haste. Harry chuckles, and soon enough they’re naked, and Harry’s beautiful.

“You’re gorgeous, Harry,” Zayn whispers, looking up where Harry is still sitting in his lap, his lean muscles looking like a chiaroscuro in the faint light coming from the bedside, and they’re both hard and leaking already, their erections catching together every time Harry shifts.

Harry chuckles. “Have you looked at yourself?” he replies, and then his eyelids flutter and his hair bounces when he rolls his hips against Zayn’s.

Zayn groans at the feeling, and he can’t help moving his hand until it’s wrapped around both of them, starting to slowly stroke them together, and feeling warmth spread all over his chest when Harry just moans and throws his head backwards.

“I want you to fuck me, Zayn,” Harry groans, his eyes still closed, “Now.”

Zayn chuckles. “Bossy,” he retorts, but he moves to sit up and effortlessly grabs Harry by the hips and flips their position so that Harry is the one lying down and Zayn is straddling him.

Harry laughs and kisses Zayn long and hard, bucking his hips on nothing like he wants to show Zayn how hard he already is, which is unnecessary, because Zayn can see it on both of them, that they’re almost to the point of hurting for it.

Zayn looks through his drawer to retrieve lube and a condom, but when he takes out the second, Harry shakes his head and puts it back. “They test us for _anything_ every month, here,” he says. “We’re both clean. I want you bare, Zayn. If you want too.”

Zayn smiles and kisses Harry some more. “Gotta be mental to refuse, babe,” he says, honestly.

They kiss some more, and then Zayn makes Harry roll over so that he’s on his stomach, exposing the perfect curve of his firm arse, on which Zayn runs his fingers. Harry moans a little and shifts, his cock trapped between the mattress and his own body, and Zayn takes pity on him at last, and stops looking. He grabs Harry by the hips, to lift him on his hands and knees.

Zayn has never done what he does then, but he feels like he has to or he’ll die, with Harry. So he leans forward and licks a stripe in between Harry’s cheeks, over his hole. Harry whines and shivers, burying his face in the pillow, from which Zayn hears a string of muffled curses. He chuckles and repeats the motion, starting to eat Harry out in earnest, while at the same time he drips lube on his fingers and slides one inside Harry next to his own tongue.

Harry gasps and pushes back, like he wants more, so Zayn obliges, and gives him another finger, and then another, without stopping the movement of his tongue until he feels Harry’s properly stretched and already too close.

“Please, Zayn, fuck, Zayn, I need it, I need it now,” Harry whimpers.

Zayn nods, even if Harry can’t see it, and removes his tongue and fingers from him, forgoing the condom like Harry asked, and just lathering his dick in lube before gripping one of Harry’s hips tightly, while he lines himself up with the other.

He hasn’t had sex in an awful long while, and he’s never had sex without a condom, ever. The feeling is so much more intense, Harry’s a hot and pleading mess in front of him, and Zayn has to use all his strength to ease in gently, instead of just letting go and slam in. He gives it to Harry, inch by inch, slowly and slowly, until Harry grunts and pushes back, forcing Zayn to bottom out quicker and deeper, and they both cry out and shout, Zayn propelled forward until his chest is all over Harry’s back.

They take a moment to recover, and Harry is tight and warm and pulsing around Zayn, and Zayn feels like he’ll come far too soon, but it doesn’t matter. It’s perfect. “You feel so good, babe,” he whispers into Harry’s ear, kissing the lobe and watching Harry shiver when Zayn’s warm breath hits his ear. Harry reaches for his own ears, and pulls out the in-ears Niall built for him, setting them blindly on the bedside. “I wanna hear it all. Every sound we make,” he says quietly, “I wanna hear them.”

Zayn nods, and then runs his hands up Harry’s chest, pulling himself and Harry up until they’re both on their knees, Zayn’s chest plastered to Harry’s back.

Zayn starts to move, finally, only with a slight rocking of his hips, and Harry sighs, leaning the back of his head on Zayn’s shoulder. Zayn gives him a sloppy kiss on the cheek, and then trails with one of his hands up and up, until it’s resting around Harry’s neck, not pressing, but holding. Harry gives out another moan, and elongates his arms backwards, to wrap them around Zayn’s own neck. “Give it to me, Zayn,” Harry murmurs, “I want it. I want it.”

Zayn nods, and slides out before slamming back in, making Harry’s whole body rattle and eliciting another grunt from him. He keeps going, heat boiling in the pit of his stomach at the thousand things he can feel while he fucks Harry bare. The tightness of Harry’s walls, the scorching heat, the wet sounds. He wonders if Harry is hearing other sounds, too, sounds Zayn’s ear can’t catch.

Harry starts a sequence of small, uninterrupted moans and pleas, meeting Zayn thrust for thrust as they both bring each other closer and closer. Their heads are almost bumping on the ceiling of the bunk bed, but it’s alright, because they’re too concentrated on how good it feels to really care.

“I’m gonna come,” Harry mutters, and Zayn nods, taking his hand away from his neck to wrap it around Harry’s dick, and starting to tug in time with his thrusts.

“Do you wanna come for me, babe?” he asks Harry, quickening his pace.

Harry nods. “Yeah, yeah, it feels so good, Zayn, fuck, yes,” he pants, and a second later he’s coming all over Zayn’s hand and his own stomach, groaning and tightening his grip around Zayn’s neck with his arms.

Zayn fucks him through his orgasm, feeling very close to his own too, and Harry takes his time to come down from it before quickening their pace more by thrusting back and forth and matching Zayn’s own thrusts.

Zayn grips Harry’s hips so tight it probably hurts, and he doesn’t have time to realize when his orgasm hits him by surprise. He bites down on Harry’s pale neck, coming inside him and filling him up, and his hips stutter one, two, three, four times as his sight goes white for a moment.

They stay there, on their knees and with Zayn still inside Harry, for a couple more minutes, retrieving their breath. Then, Zayn gently pulls out, and the sight of his own come trickling out from Harry’s hole almost makes him hard again. Harry notices, because he grins.

Zayn finds a clean towel with which they clean themselves before sliding under the duvet, crammed in the small space, but they don’t mind, because Harry is already wrapping himself around Zayn like a koala bear, and Zayn is not mental, so he doesn’t want it any other way, cheers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you're thinking :)
> 
> I am also on Tumblr as wont-you-stay-till-the-am.tumblr.com, come hit me up if you wanna talk.


	4. Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Harry, I don’t like this,” Mariya says with big, worried eyes when Harry tells her he’s going away for a couple days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual disclaimer: I don't know or own any of the characters present in this work. I only own the plot and the original characters.

Harry wakes up way before the sun rises, with a pounding headache and his legs tangled in Zayn’s.

He blinks and squeezes his eyes shut. He’s never gone this long without the in-ears, since Niall built them for him. He can hear _everything_.

The sounds coming from the other side of the building, where the people with night shifts are still going about. The cluttering of metal and plastic from the kitchen on the first floor, where the staff is getting ready to serve breakfast in the cafeterias. The steady thrum of Zayn’s heartbeat next to him sounds like fucking drums to Harry. It’s not annoying, but it’s loud.

Harry had learned to live with the noises, in the last ten years, but now that he got used to the in-ears dulling them, they’re almost unbearable to the naked ear.

He shakes his head. He still doesn’t regret taking the in-ears out to hear every single thing while he had sex with Zayn. It was hot, to listen to all the small sounds they made, from their groans and pants to the wet slamming of skin against skin. At some point, Harry thought he could even hear the sounds Zayn was making _inside_ of him. It was so hot that it was probably what had made Harry come untouched, and harder than he’d ever done in his life.

Now, though, the headache is making his temples pulse, so he grabs the in-ears from the bedside table where he left them, and carefully plugs them in again. He sighs when all the noises are immediately reduced to only the ones a _normal_ human ear can perceive.

When he turns to look at Zayn, he finds him awake, on his side, staring at Harry with something a bit like fondness and a bit like worry in his gaze. Zayn smiles and runs his pointer finger up and down Harry’s arm, tracing his tattoos and looking at them. “Morning,” he says, in barely a whisper.

Harry chuckles. “’S still night,” he points out, gesturing to the clock reading 4:50.

Zayn laughs quietly, and nods, lying down on his back and staring at the ceiling. “When I was still just training here, I had to wake up at four in the morning every day.”

Harry has thought about their ‘training’ quite a lot since the day before when he’d witnessed Zayn create his own mind shield for the first real time. Now, when he stares at Zayn, he can see bruises shaped like fingers on Zayn’s shoulder, and he’s sure they’re not his doing from some hours earlier.

He snuggles closer to Zayn, putting his head on his other shoulder. “I wanted to punch Liam in the face yesterday on the jet.”

Zayn hums questioningly and frowns, but then he probably understands what Harry’s talking about, because he sighs. “Oh. The shield,” he just says.

“Yeah,” Harry sighs, “He hurt you. I know he wouldn’t have if there was another choice, but still.”

“No, Haz, babe,” Zayn smiles a bit sadly, “It really was the only way.”

“Why?”

Zayn wraps an arm around Harry’s shoulders. It’s nice, to just lay in bed cuddled against each other, and talk. Harry can see himself and Zayn do that in the future, when Haruspex and Oracle and the Disease won’t exist, and they’ll be in a normal bed in a normal bedroom, rather than in a bunk bed too tiny to accommodate two people unless they want to be on top of each other all the time. Not that Harry doesn’t want that too, with Zayn.

“When they train us here, in the paramilitary for Haruspex,” Zayn says slowly, “They also teach us to make some sort of shield for our minds, yeah? And… it’s really not that good of a shield, it’s just, like, concentrate hard enough that you’re able not to think about anything. So whoever tries to read you doesn’t find anything important.”

“Then why is it painful?” Harry asks, a bit petulantly.

Zayn chuckles. “Because,” he says gently, poking Harry’s nose, “It takes us a long fucking time to be able to concentrate so much. And we can’t do that in emergency or stress situations, it’s just impossible. So, like, Haruspex pulls a Pavlov on us,” he gulps down some air. “They train us for months, even years, by making us feel pain when we create our shields. Until it comes to a point that feeling that specific pain _triggers_ our shield. We can choose our pain. Niall and I chose Liam’s fingers digging in our shoulder, because there’s no one we trust for this more than Liam,” he runs his fingers up and down Harry’s arm again. “Also, like, the pain is useful. Because if you’re feeling a localized pain, your brain is gonna focus on that, and it’ll be more difficult to see anything else in your mind.”

Harry feels his stomach constrict at what Zayn just told him kinda nonchalantly. “It’s barbaric,” he comments stubbornly, “I hate it.”

Zayn sighs, chuckling a little again. “Don’t be cross, babe. There’s a lot of things we hate and can’t do shit about. Like me hating that you wanna go to Oracle,” he says, getting serious by the end of the sentence.

“Hey. That’s a low blow.”

“Tough luck,” Zayn grins a little. “But I mean it, babe. We can find another way. You don’t have to go.”

Harry shakes his head, holding Zayn tighter with an arm across his chest. “We could find another way, in a long time, and Mariya will be long dead. And the other kids too, maybe. They’re safe for now, but we can’t say for how long. And we still don’t really know if the damage to Mariya’s Aegis is permanent, if it’s _curable_ ,” he says, his voice breaking. “I gotta go, Zayn. It’s the only way to finally find out what the fuck Oracle’s doing, and stop it.”

Zayn doesn’t reply for a moment, and Harry knows that it’s because he knows Harry’s right. In the end, he sighs and grabs Harry’s chin in between his thumb and index, making him tilt his head up. “Gone a long way from being a stroppy kid whining about having been snogged in a café by a stranger,” he just says, staring at Harry’s lips with a grin.

Harry laughs, and then climbs over Zayn’s lap, which admittedly almost requires no movement for how they’re already plastered to each other. “I’d very much like to be snogged by that stranger again,” he says, “You remember his name?” he adds, with his lips hovering over Zayn’s.

Zayn lifts his head to kiss Harry, but he grins and pulls away a little. “No,” Zayn sighs, “I’m afraid I don’t. You’re gonna have to make do with me.”

Harry pouts. “How will I survive?” he sighs, and then finally kisses Zayn when he sees him arch his eyebrows while he still tries to chase Harry’s fleeting lips.

“Stranger danger my arse,” Zayn mutters, opening his mouth to lick into Harry’s, one of his hands firmly placed on Harry’s nape.

Harry laughs. “Well, you’re not a stranger anymore, are you?” he replies, grinding his hips down for good measure.

Zayn heaves a groan, and Harry can feel him hard against his own hardness. He grinds his hips again, and Zayn groans again, so Harry keeps doing that to make Zayn emit those sounds on a loop. _That’s a sound I wouldn’t mind hearing for the rest of my fucking life_ , he thinks.

Zayn pants while Harry rubs their crotches together, and his fingers dig into the meat of Harry’s arse, pushing him down more, to get more friction. Now it’s Harry who groans, and suddenly the dry-humping is not enough, not even close, and he knows he’s still open from the night before, so he just rummages through the sheets until he finds the lube, smears it over Zayn’s dick and then lines it underneath himself.

One of the advantages of working for Haruspex is that they all get regularly tested for whatever existing disease or sickness, which means Harry and Zayn can forgo a condom and it’s not gonna be an irresponsible thing to do.

Zayn shivers and pants, his hands still gripping Harry’s arse. “Need me to prep you a little first, babe?” he asks, with half-lidded eyes.

Harry shakes his head. “Still open from earlier,” he says bluntly.

Zayn shivers again. “I can’t wrap my head around the fact that, ah, that you look so, ah, innocent, and then you’re also _this_ , ah, fuck,” he mutters, his sentence breaking in more than one point while Harry lowers himself on his dick and takes it, slow and thoroughly.

“I like to think I contain multitudes, Zayn,” Harry sighs out, “Fuck it feels so good.”

Zayn nods, his palms stroking Harry’s straining thighs. “I like to think I’m a great lover,” he grins.

Harry bucks his hips. “Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t had sex in something like two years.”

Zayn frowns and blinks. “Really? Fuck, that’s why, ah, you’re so tight,” he gasps, “But I thought you and Nick…”

Harry immediately grimaces and rolls his hips harder. “Ew,” he says, “No, absolutely not, I’d have rather cut my own dick off.”

Zayn laughs, his head reclined on the pillows as Harry starts to move quicker. “Good thing you didn’t. I like it,” he says, going for it with his hand and wrapping it around Harry’s leaking and hard dick.

“Clearly,” Harry comments, using his knees as leverage and starting to bounce up and down Zayn’s dick in earnest.

Zayn grunts and groans, his other hand digging in Harry’s thigh and scratching downwards, leaving four red lines on Harry’s pale skin. Harry’s eyelids flutter and he grows even harder at that small pain. He didn’t know he had a pain kink. Or maybe it’s just Zayn.

Zayn notices, and he grins, sitting up and wrapping an arm around Harry’s waist, to guide him up and down at a better angle. “Come back safe and sound from fucking Oracle,” he murmurs on Harry’s lips, “And we’ll run a thousand tests on this kink of yours.”

Harry rolls his eyes and laughs, but he never gets to reply, because then Zayn pushes him harder down on his dick, and he kinda loses the ability of speaking.

+

“Harry, I don’t like this,” Mariya says with big, worried eyes when Harry tells her he’s going away for a couple days.

Harry sighs. “It’s okay, doll, I just have to take care of something and…”

“You’re going to the bad men,” Mariya says surely. “You’re going to the bad men… _taynyy_?” she frowns, looking at Zayn.

Zayn chuckles. “Undercover,” he tells her.

Mariya nods. “Undercover,” she repeats, narrowing her eyes at Harry.

Harry is, quite frankly, a bit shocked. “How do you even _know_?” he asks, not bothering to deny it because he has a feeling Mariya won’t be fooled.

Mariya shrugs, and it’s Zayn who answers. “This one’s a literal little genius,” he says. “Her IQ is one of the highest I’ve ever seen in my life. When I ran my tests on her last night, I thought my monitors were broken for a moment, I couldn’t believe those numbers were real.”

Mariya blinks and then looks at Harry. “Harry?” she whispers.

Harry chuckles. “Yeah?”

“I do not understand this one,” she whispers, looking at Zayn like Zayn won’t be able to hear her. “He speaks weird. Fast. Like Siberian Russian.”

Zayn laughs openly, and even if Mariya doesn’t know why, after a moment she laughs too.

Harry looks at her, sitting in the middle of the bed with two shiny metal buds attached to each of her temples. Niall made a device based on the anti-cheating ones overnight, only making it a bit lighter, and calibrated on Immune brainwaves. She seems to be doing fine, but Niall has been clear that it can’t be a permanent solution. The buds only work for a couple hours, and then they fall, spent.

There’s no way of permanently shielding someone’s brain, and Harry knows, because otherwise Haruspex wouldn’t put its paramilitary forces through that barbaric shield training.

Niall has been able to produce buds for the next two days, so they will have to make them do, and hope Harry will find something out at Oracle.

Mariya is still kinda worried when Harry finally hugs her and leaves.

He and Zayn join Louis, Niall and Liam in Zayn’s studio. Louis is there, looking like he didn’t sleep at all, and in front of him there’s a small machine that looks like some sort of microscope.

There are also two big ass needles on the table, Harry notices with a gulp. “Oh, fuck,” he hears Zayn mutter, “That thing’s gonna go in my back, isn’t it?”

Louis sighs. “I’m afraid so, Zed,” he says, “Who wants to go first?”

+

It hurts like a motherfucker. Zayn has to grind his teeth, hard, to avoid not screaming like a pig, when Louis carefully inserts the needle in his back. _Sorry, sorry_ , Louis murmurs in his head, _I’m almost done, I swear_.

“Hurry, Louis,” Zayn only grunts through his teeth, out loud.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” Louis says again, and after a couple more painful moments, Zayn feels the needle slide out of his spine, and grunts one more curse. “Done,” Louis says, “Stay here, don’t get up or you’ll go straight to the ground.”

Zayn isn’t even thinking about moving, thank you very much, so he just takes a couple steadying breaths and turns his head to look at Harry. He’s lying down on the second of the two medical beds Zayn has in a corner of his lab, naked from the waist up, and he smiles encouragingly at Zayn with a thumbs up and dimples in his cheeks.

“You ready, Hazza?” Louis asks, sighing.

Harry grins. “I was born ready. Except before meeting you guys. Well then, let’s say I was _reborn_ ready in Haruspex,” he comments.

Zayn can’t read his mind— _yet_ —and he wonders if Harry is really that calm and collected, or he’s just pretending that he is for their sake. _Zayn’s_ sake.

Either way, the grin and sarcasm falls off Harry’s face as soon as Louis dips the long, thick needle in the middle of Harry’s spine. Harry cries out in pain, but he doesn’t move. He just opens his hand, and quick as lightning, Liam’s there, closing his own hand around Harry’s and letting him squeeze it with all his might as Harry whimpers and tries not to scream.

Zayn would very much like to be the one holding Harry’s hand, but he still can’t move, his spine hurting so much it feels like it’s broken.

“I can’t believe we never thought of doing a test on bone marrow,” Louis mutters frustratingly.

“Why would we think that?” Zayn huffs. “There was nothing in his blood tests, so there was no reason for us to think something was gonna be in his bone marrow.”

“But there is _plenty_ , Zayn,” Louis says, and he moves a little as he keeps extracting Harry’s marrow through the syringe.

Zayn gapes a little, because it’s true. Mixed with Harry’s bone marrow are minuscule, electric blue particles. They’re the same colour of Harry’s Aegis, and Zayn thinks they’re beautiful.

“What?” Harry whines, “Do I have… ah, fuck, this hurts… do I have superpowers?” he manages to laugh.

Louis chuckles. “Yeah, Hazza. You’re our very own friendly neighbourhood Spider-man.”

Harry hums. “I’d rather be the Hulk. I don’t fancy spiders that much, and I want the super-strength.”

Zayn thinks that Harry might not have physical super-strength, but the mere fact that he’s there, giving himself up almost completely for _this_ , makes him one of the strongest people Zayn’s ever met anyway.

Louis is finally done with Harry, and he takes both the vials he collected from them to the machine he set on top of Zayn’s table. Zayn and Harry keep looking at each other while Zayn hears the machine start to whir and thump.

“You’re gonna have a special pass for my contorted mind, in a while,” Harry grins, panting.

Zayn chuckles. “It’s gonna be a nightmare I’m sure.”

Minutes later, they both feel like they can move again, so Zayn stands, wincing at the soreness, and then helps Harry up, rubbing his back but taking care of not touching the puncture wound. “Just imagine how much they hurt Mariya, with two of _these_ needles,” Harry murmurs, “I’m gonna destroy fucking Oracle from the inside if it kills me, I swear.”

“ _If_ this works,” Louis hums, his eyes focused on the machine, “I did everything I could, but we still don’t know if it’s gonna be for nothing. There’s no guarantee this selective Delphi works. In that case, I’m sorry for the useless pain.”

“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t give Harry a fucking transmitter and mic like normal spy people,” Niall grumbles.

Liam sighs. “Because Oracle is probably gonna search Harry even in his pants if he shows up there,” he says patiently, “We can’t risk it. It’s already dangerous without letting them find a fucking mic.”

Zayn and Harry wear their tops again, and then sit around the table. “So this machine makes the pills?” he asks Louis.

Louis nods. “Yeah. This is one of those we have up in the med lab, we use it to produce our own meds here. I dismantled it and modified it a little to make it support the production of pills with the same structure as the Delphi Harry gave me. When the pills are ready, Zayn will take the one made with Harry’s cells. And Harry will take Zayn’s. Hopefully, it will create a stable connection that lasts more than a couple hours.”

“The Delphi lasts forty-eight hours,” Harry says, “So there’s a good chance this will too?”

Louis doesn’t look particularly convinced. “There are literally zero good chances right now, Harry. We’re stumbling in the fucking darkness.”

Harry sighs. “Well, then good thing you’re the best med we have here. At least there’s a good chance of _that_ ,” he smiles.

Louis smiles back, clearly appreciating Harry showing off his undying optimism. Soon enough, the machine stops whirring and two small, circular pills pop out of the opening. One of them is electric blue, and the other has the colour of blood.

“Okay,” Louis sighs, picking up the blue one and giving it to Zayn. Then he hands Harry the red one “Ready to log into the Matrix?”

Harry nods, and then looks at Zayn. “If you read something embarrassing in my mind,” he says seriously, “I deeply apologise.”

Zayn chuckles. “It won’t be more embarrassing than the things you say out loud, babe.”

They put the pills on their tongue, and then gulp them down with some water.

Zayn doesn’t feel different at all, he thinks. Maybe the pill takes time to have its effect, and maybe Severus Snape would be really funny in skinny jeans and floral button downs shouting “Ten points to Flower-puff!”. _What the fuck did I just think?_ , he frowns.

Harry chuckles. _That was me, I think._

_Harry?_

_Yeah. Can you hear me? I can hear you. It’s so fucking weird. Your mind is full of stuff in Greek letters and numbers._

Zayn laughs, still looking at Harry in the eyes, and excavating in his mind, just a little. He hears thoughts about Haruspex and Mariya, he sees images of Harry training and studying, he’s hit with his own image as he was nestled in between Harry’s thighs and fucking into him the night before. He feels what Harry felt, the pain and pleasure of having someone inside him after so long, and he sees himself as Harry saw him. His hair loose and sweaty, his eyes sparkling and his smile blinding, his eyelashes so long they tickled Harry’s face when they kissed. _Am I really this beautiful?_

Harry smiles. _To me, you are._

“And they’re already using it to literally mind-fuck,” Louis comments, light-heartedly and with a giggle. “It works, then. Oi oi, eureka!”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Shut up, Louis, it’s six in the bloody morning and there’s no in-ear that can protect me from _your_ screams,” he says.

And then he thinks, _But I really fucking love you all anyway_. Zayn can see it clear as day in Harry’s mind, and he smiles. _I love them too_ , he tells Harry.

Harry smiles.

“I feel left out,” Niall comments, “We should make more of these selective little shits. Might be fun.”

Harry scoffs. “I won’t have anyone suck things out of my spine again if I can help it.”

“Agreed,” Zayn declares, and then takes a breath, “We need to test the range, though. And if it works, we need to move.”

+

It works. Liam and Niall take Harry for a quick cruise around town, and Zayn finds out that no matter how far they are, he can still feel and hear Harry in his mind, and vice versa. Harry can send him images of what he’s seeing, and talk to him, just like Zayn can do with anybody else.

_Zayn?_ , Harry asks when he’s on his way back to Haruspex.

_Yeah, babe._

_Do you really see me like that? Like… like the sun shines brighter when I smile?_

Zayn rolls his eyes at himself, and he’d rather _not_ admit ever having thought that, but now it’s not like he can help having Harry reading his thoughts, so it’s pointless to lie. _Yeah, babe_ , he says at last. _You’re a fucking Disney princess to me sometimes._

Harry laughs a little in Zayn’s mind, and Zayn doesn’t need to _look_ to know the way his dimples are showing and his eyes are filling with mirth. _That’s cheesy_ , Harry comments.

_If you ever speak of this with anyone, you’re dead._

Harry laughs again, but then he sobers up. _Don’t worry. I don’t feel the need to tell the world my boyfriend’s so gone for me. I mean. I mean, I didn’t mean to say that. Fuck. Sorry. It’s just. It’s harder to stop thoughts than stop words. Fuck. I…_

Zayn laughs too, enjoying Harry’s panic one more moment before interrupting him. _It’s alright, babe. I guess we can say that out loud now. Well, not out loud. But officially anyway. I’m your boyfriend. And you’re mine_ , he tells Harry, and when he does, something flutters in his stomach, the annoying butterflies Harry awoke from day one.

Harry chuckles. _Okay. Good to know. This selective Delphi has already been very cathartic._

_Shut up, Haz_ , Zayn grunts in his mind, and Harry giggles.

When they’re all back in Zayn’s studio, they quickly start moving with their plan, because they know the pill will have a limited effect, and there are no guarantees as to how long it’ll work.

So Harry sits down by the table, and calls Nick, putting him on speaker while the rest of them doesn’t utter a sound. “Hazza?” Nick answers, groggily like Harry woke him up.

“Hey, Nick,” Harry says in a sheepish tone, “Sorry to wake you up. And, um, sorry I disappeared last night.”

Nick hums. “I looked for you anywhere, babe,” he says, and Zayn feels a pang of anger in hearing _Nick_ call Harry like _he_ calls him. Harry feels it, and Zayn’s not sure it has anything to do with any pill. He puts a hand on Zayn’s knee, and keeps it there.

“Yeah,” he says into the receiver. “I’m sorry. It, uh, it got me a little. It was intense. So I went away.”

Nick chuckles. “It’s all good, Hazza, I know. It is intense.”

“I want more,” Harry replies, trying to sound convincingly like he’s craving something.

Nick laughs again. “Of course you do,” he says “It’s like drugs, isn’t it? It’s cool, it opens your fucking mind, it’s amazing.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Harry nods, “So I thought about it. And I wanna join whatever this is. Will you help me, Nick?” he pleads.

Nick chuckles, and Harry hears the pop of his chewing gum. “Of course, Harry. My wildest dream is having you here in _this_ with me. We’ll be fucking indestructible together. Meet me on campus, alright? We’ll go with my car.”

“Okay. Cheers, Nick,” Harry says, and ends the call.

Zayn is fuming by the time the call is done, and he looks at Harry. “I hate this,” he says honestly, “I hate that you’re going, I hate that this guy wants you with him, I hate that he chews his gum with his mouth open, I hate that he calls you ‘babe’ and I hate that now he thinks he has a chance with you.”

Louis sighs. “I’d tell you ‘inside voice’, but since Hazza here can hear it now, there’s no point.”

Harry shakes his head. “This is _good_ , Zayn. It’s good that he has a crush on me and thinks he has a chance. His guard will be lowered with me. He’ll give me what we _need_. Answers, Zayn,” he says, shaking Zayn’s knee he’s still gripping. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do!” Zayn exclaims, shocked, “I do, Harry. It’s _him_ I don’t trust.”

Harry nods. “I know. But we don’t need to trust him. We need to deceive him enough to make _him_ trust _me_. I can do that. My Mum always says my dimples can open any door.”

Zayn sighs. “I agree with her. Even too much,” he mutters.

+

Nick is already waiting for Harry in the parking lot of their old campus when Harry gets there. He smiles at Nick and approaches him, only for Nick to instantly envelop him in a hug.

_Get your fucking hands off him_ , Zayn says in his mind.

Harry chuckles. _Be quiet. You’ll distract me._

_I really fucking hate him_ , Zayn only replies.

“Harry,” Nick sighs, letting go of him, “I’m sorry if it was too much, last night. I should have taken more care of you.”

Harry shakes his head. “No, it’s okay. It wasn’t you. I just, like, wasn’t prepared.”

Nick nods. “I wasn’t either, the first time,” he says, and Harry realizes his pupils are a bit blown, and he’s lightly shaking. _He said it feels like drugs, the Delphi. I’m fine with ours, though._

“What about your little Haruspex friends?” Nick then asks, and it almost gives Harry a heart attack.

“What?”

Nick laughs. “It’s alright, Hazza, I know. That’s why Oracle sent me to talk to you. They know you’ve been already taken by those wankers. So they thought I’d have a better chance to make you turn on them, because we’re friends.”

_We’re not_. Harry clears his throat. “Yeah, well, didn’t need to do much. They’re crazy, in there. Always blabbering about the greater good and shit, always running tests on me. Made me their lab rat, and the pay’s not even that good.”

He feels discomfort and anguish coming from Zayn, and he begs him not to believe anything he’s saying. _He just needs to trust me, Zayn. Don’t be a drama queen._

Nick laughs. “Kinda imagined that. They tried to catch me as well. I didn’t let them, and I vanished right through their fucking fingers when I realized they’d found me. Oracle found me first, and the Delphi feels too good to give it up for whatever greater good Haruspex thinks they’re doing.”

Harry nods. “So, are we going?”

Nick arches an eyebrow. “You seem eager.”

Harry does his best to laugh. “Can you blame me? That pill felt fucking amazing, Nick. I want more.”

Nick smiles and nods. “Yeah, yeah. I understand. Come on then, let’s go,” he says, pressing a button on his car keys. The car beeps and the doors open.

_Be careful, babe_ , Zayn tells him with a sigh.

_I will be, babe. Trust me_ , he replies, and then smiles at Nick.

They get to the outskirts of town, and Harry reaches for Zayn in his mind all the time, to show him the way to Oracle and make sure their connection is still working.

Nick parks the car next to a wide cornfield, and when they get out, Harry is faced with an anonymous, quite small concrete building. “Used to be a metal factory,” Nick explains, locking his car and guiding Harry towards the entrance. “The building is abandoned on paper, so there’s no way anybody could find it. Pretty safe.”

_It looks anything but safe_ , Harry thinks grimly.

Then, he follows Nick through a door, and they get inside Oracle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you're thinking :)
> 
> I am also on Tumblr as wont-you-stay-till-the-am.tumblr.com, come hit me up if you wanna talk.


	5. Extraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re about to meet the boss,” Nick says in a stage-whisper, with a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual disclaimer: I don't know or own any of the characters present in this work. I only own the plot and the original characters.

“There is errors in this book,” Mariya announces from the armchair in Zayn’s lab.

They’re all sitting around the table, their eyes fixed on Harry’s monitors through which they’re keeping his brain values under control through Zayn’s mind, and Zayn has his own brain concentrated on what Harry’s seeing, the way to Oracle. He’s tracing the path with a marker on a map, but Nick is not going particularly fast, and Zayn can multitask.

So, he looks at Mariya. “What did you say, _kukla_?” he asks her.

_Kukla_ is Russian for _doll_. For the rest, he speaks English to the kid, because Mariya seems to prefer it. She likes the language, apparently, Zayn can see it in the series of endorphins recorded by her own screens.

“I said errors in this book,” she says, rolling her eyes and standing from the armchair, the book clutched to her chest.

“It’s a book about fucking _probability_ ,” Louis hisses, abashed.

Mariya hums a quiet song to herself and hops on a chair by the table, opening one of Zayn’s blank notebooks, and starting to note down rows and rows of numbers and equations. They all stare at her with their mouths open, until she hums again, contently, and drops the pen. “There. Correct now,” she announces, sticking the sheet she just wrote in the book.

She keeps reading for a handful of minutes, noting other things down and sticking her notes through the pages, until she probably feels a bit observed and raises her eyes, blinking at all of them. “Wha’?” she asks, and it sounds just like Harry says it.

Louis chuckles. “Nothing, love. We’re just a bit bamboozled by you being ten and solving probability calculations and all.”

Mariya giggles. “ _Bamboozled_ ,” she repeats, writing the word down on the notebook and then nodding “I like it.”

Niall snorts. “Where did you learn that?” he asks her, pointing to the book.

She shrugs. “I like math. The library in Sankt Peterburg has books. I read. I learn.”

“Of course,” Zayn chuckles, “Perfectly normal.”

Mariya arches an eyebrow. “Normal does not exist, Zayn. Normal is relative,” she declares.

Zayn bursts out laughing. “You’re really a little genius, ain’t you?” he comments.

Mariya shrugs again. “Where is Harry? I want Harry. He makes the sounds go away,” she says, scratching at her temple, where the buds are probably starting to bother her and lose their effect.

Zayn looks at Niall, who gestures to a box he set on the table, where more blocking buds are ready to be used.

“Harry’s gonna come back real soon,” Zayn tells her.

Mariya shakes her head. “Forty-six per cent probability only,” she replies sadly, scribbling ‘46%’ on the notebook and then resuming her reading.

Zayn sighs. _It will have to do,_ kukla, he thinks.

“It will have to do, _kukla_ ,” Maria repeats, and the next moment, the buds fall off her temples, clinking to the ground, and Mariya whimpers a little, pressing her little fists to her temples and blinking tears away from her eyes.

The screen reporting Mariya’s Aegis activity beeps with an alarm, and Niall sighs and runs to her, to place two new buds on each temple. Immediately, the kid stops whining in pain and the values on the monitor get back to normal.

_She can’t hold on much longer,_ Zayn thinks in a panic, staring at the ominous crack in Mariya’s Aegis, and then forces himself to stop, because Harry can’t worry about Mariya as well, now.

He sees the seemingly abandoned factory, and straightens his back. “He’s there,” he says, circling a point on the map, a point where nothing should be.

Nobody speaks anymore as Zayn watches Harry get inside Oracle.

+

_Harry? Harry, babe, please talk to me._

Harry realizes he hasn’t answered Zayn’s call in his mind, not explicitly, too busy concentrating on _looking_ around. _Yeah. Sorry. This place is creepy._

He hears Zayn’s relieved sigh, and he tries to look at everything he can for Zayn to see it, as he follows Nick through a spacious entrance and up a set of emergency stairs in metal.

It’s… _dirty_ , Harry thinks. Oracle’s headquarters are nothing like Haruspex. The building, or at least what Harry is seeing so far, looks exactly like an abandoned factory might look like, with walls blackened by mould, scarcely lit corners, and windows so dusty that it kinda feels like it’s night, for how little light filters through them.

“Not that fancy,” Nick comments as they walk through a corridor, “But we don’t need fancy.”

There is a series of closed doors, with no labels except for one, which just reads _Planning Room_. Harry keeps it in mind, because if it’s the only labelled one, it must mean something.

Nick points down into a stairwell of maybe five sets of stairs. “That’s the lab where they produce the pills,” he says casually. At the end of the stairwell, Harry can see harsh white lights coming from behind an opaque plexiglass door framed in white.

_Good. Good, this is good_ , Zayn thinks convulsively in Harry’s mind. Harry nods.

Nick stops at one of the unlabelled doors, and knocks. “You’re about to meet the boss,” Nick says in a stage-whisper, with a grin.

Harry’s palms are sweating, but he’s using all the training he ever did with Liam. _Don’t show it. Relax. Don’t let yourself shake._

The door creaks open, and Harry thinks it’s ominous, the creak, and he feels like he’s in a fucking spy movie before remembering that he’s actually being a spy in that moment. He follows Nick inside, and immediately two men are around him, starting to search him everywhere. _We were right to use the selective Delphi instead of a mic, or I would be fucked right now_.

He hears Zayn sigh. _I still don’t like this_.

“Clear,” one of the two men declares after taking Harry’s phone and pocketing it—which Harry doesn’t worry about because the phone is not really his, it’s a replica just for show—and when they remove themselves from his line of sight, Harry frowns.

There’s a girl sitting in a chair. She can’t be older than twenty, but she’s very tall, Harry can tell even if she's not standing, with a thick French braid keeping her blonde hair in place down her right shoulder. She’s smiling, although the smile doesn’t reach her eyes, which are of a piercing blue. She looks weirdly familiar.

She stands up and circles the desk, and when she does, the braid falls away from her shoulder, and Harry can see a birthmark, probably as big as his index finger, of a light brown colour and with jagged edges.

_I’ve already seen this birthmark. Where? Where?_

“Hello, Harry Styles,” the girl says. “My name is Irina Petrova. I believe you know my little sister.”

+

Zayn doesn’t have time to piece everything he’s seeing through Harry’s eyes together before the girl, the Oracle boss apparently, introduces herself and freezes the blood in his veins.

He looks at Mariya, who is still concentrated on her book on probability, and he scrambles to get to her and kneel in front of her. “ _Kukla_?” he says, “Do you have a sister? A big sister named Irina?”

Mariya frowns, and then nods. “ _Da_. I never saw her, only in pictures. Mama and Papa say she ran away. When I was little. She’s a bad person.”

Zayn makes sure Harry is listening to what Mariya is saying through his mind, and then nods. “Why do you say she’s a bad person, _kukla_?”

Mariya shrugs. “I find her diary. Lots of bad thoughts. About me. That I was special and she was not, that she wanted to open my brain and see what is inside it. Scary,” she says, her little face going a bit pale. Zayn sighs and nods again, hugging Mariya to his chest because he can feel how uncomfortable she is right now. His eyes fall on her shoulder from which the too big t-shirt has slipped. The birthmark is there, same as the one Irina Petrova has.

_Harry, be fucking careful_ , he pleads.

+

“You’re Mariya Petrova’s sister?” Harry asks, keeping his cool. “The little Russian girl?”

Irina rolls her eyes. “Yeah. A pain in the arse. It was clear to me since she started speaking, that she was… different. I thought she was just autistic or something, always reading, always counting under her breath with those fucking books.”

_I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna kill her_ , Harry thinks. He chuckles. “Yeah, she’s a bit of a weird child, to say the least.”

“You know, don’t you,” Irina Petrova grins, “Your organisation took her away from Sankt Peterburg. Why?”

Harry shrugs. “They don’t tell me much, to be honest. I’m just the lab rat,” he replies, deciding to risk it. Mariya said that Irina went away from home when she was little, so maybe it’s fair to assume Irina doesn’t talk to her parents. In which case she shouldn’t know it was _Harry_ who brought Mariya to England.

_That’s a lot of fucking hypotheses, Harry, fucking hell_ , Zayn screams. _Don’t overdo it._

Irina seems convinced, though. “Figured. All those fucking secrets. We don’t have secrets, here, Harry Styles,” she says, sitting on the desk and crossing her slim legs covered in leggings. “What do you wanna know? I’ll tell you.”

Harry frowns. “That seems a bit… bold?”

Irina laughs. “Yeah, well. I need you, after all. We need more Immunes. So I gotta gain your trust one way or another,” she gestures to a chair, and then nods at Nick and the two guards with a flick of her braid. They nod, and leave the room closing the door after themselves.

“What do you do here?” Harry asks, sitting on the chair Irina pointed. “Nick told me, like, about the pills. Which is why I’m here without ‘my organization’s’ knowledge,” he adds, putting the words in inverted commas with his fingers.

Irina chuckles again. “Which of the pills do you wanna know about? We have two kinds.”

Harry shrugs. “The Delphi. I don’t care about the other one, I’m an Immune.”

“Fair,” Irina nods, “It’s made with Immune bone marrow. The process is the same for the normal blocking pills we sell, the Shield. Only, we reversed it, and Delphi came out.”

“Why do you make them? I can’t imagine it would be a great source of income. Immunes are very few.”

Irina nods. “Yeah, it’s true. But those few that exist are… very important. Like that annoying little pest of my sister.”

Harry chuckles. “She is a little pest,” he lies. “Why do you hate her? She’s, like, ten.”

Irina scoffs. “Doesn’t matter. She’s _special_ ,” she says with a grimace. “My parents made sure I knew that, every day, repeatedly. That she was special and I was normal. It was unbearable, being in the house with them. So I went away and I found Oracle, here in England. The man who ran it was old, you see. And he had a thing for Russian whores,” she winks, “so I gave him a little taste of Russian pussy, and next thing I knew, he was on his deathbed and naming me his successor.”

Harry’s stomach turns a little at the tale. “So that’s what you do here? You fight the telepathy through pills?”

_Tell me the truth. Tell me it’s_ you _who created the Disease in the first place._

Irina tuts. “Harry, Harry. Do you think I should trust you? You come from Haruspex, after all.”

“I hate them, though,” Harry mutters. “A bunch of crazy motherfuckers, I swear.”

Irina sighs. “It’s not enough,” she declares, and then stands up, rummaging through a drawer before going back to Harry, getting closer and closer until she’s towering over him, because he’s still sitting.

Irina rakes her eyes up and down Harry’s face and body. “You’re pretty,” she says with a smirk, lowering herself until they’re at eye-level, and Harry also has a clear sight of her cleavage.

He feels a rush of anger coming from Zayn, but ignores it, and pretends his eyes are falling to her tits. “You too,” he says, gulping down.

Irina chuckles. She sit on Harry’s lap, her legs around Harry’s hips, and fidgets with Harry’s necklace. “Here’s how this is gonna work, Harry Styles,” she says in a fake careless tone, “I know you want the Delphi. Nick told me that you’re already craving it after getting one taste. I get it, it must feel amazing,” she giggles, “But I can’t give you that for free, and I can’t give you that without knowing _for sure_ that I can trust you.”

Harry gulps down again, and hopes Irina doesn’t realize that her sitting in his lap is doing _absolutely nothing_ for him. “Tell me how to prove myself to you. I’ll do it. I need it, Irina.”

Irina laughs. She doesn’t say anything, and yet Harry realizes what she’s gonna say the moment the words leave his mouth, because _of course_.

_No no no no_ , Zayn moans in his mind.

Irina opens her hand, and a small plastic bag is there, with a pill of Delphi inside. She pats it on Harry’s chest. “Go find Nick. Have lunch. Relax. And then take this Delphi,” she instructs Harry. “Won’t be too hard, since that’s the reason you’re here in the first place. After you take it, let it do its thing, and then come back to me. We can have a honest little mind-chat. And then you can start your new, telepath life with us. How’s that sound?”

_No no no no_ , Zayn is still hissing.

Harry nods. “Sounds perfect.”

+

_You have to come back. Immediately. I’m sending a team_ , Zayn says as soon as Nick leaves Harry in his room after lunch, so that he can use his shower and then take the pill. “Have the experience by yourself, it’s more mind-blowing”, Nick has said.

Harry shakes his head and starts running the water in Nick’s bathroom for good measure. _No, Zayn, fucking hell, stay put for a second, okay? I can do this. I have to do this. This is our chance._

_They want you to take_ Delphi _, Harry! How the fuck are you gonna hide from_ that _?_

Harry doesn’t reply. His brain is going fast, turning and turning the problem upside down, hoping to find a loophole he can use. He sets the little bag with the Delphi Irina gave him on the sink, and stares at it.

He can feel Zayn’s fear in his mind voice, and it breaks his heart. It’s painful.

_Painful._

“Yes,” he murmurs, and then licks his lips, trying to convey everything he needs into his next mind sentences.

_Zayn, I need a shield. Like one of those you make. This way, even if I take the Delphi, Irina will only see what I choose to let her see._

_Are you out of your fucking mind, Harry? That’s not how it works, it takes training, and pain!_ , Zayn shouts. Harry can imagine him, in his lab, probably alone, pacing up and down on the linoleum with his hands pulling at his hair as he tries to come up with something.

_You said it, Zayn_ , Harry replies. _If you feel localized pain, your brain won’t be able to focus on much else. We have to be confident that that, plus my probably shitty first-time shield, will be enough._

Zayn grunts frustratedly. _It won’t be, babe. She’ll notice._

_I’ll distract her somehow. I’ll ask more about Mariya. She gets mad when she speaks about her, but at the same time it looks like she’s so bitter she_ wants _to speak about her. It’ll have to do._

_So I’m just gonna have to stand here while you hurt yourself and risk your fucking life?_ , Zayn asks in a small whimper.

_Yeah, babe. That’s what you have to do_ , he replies grimly.

Harry opens the cabinets and drawers in Nick’s room, knowing he’s waiting for Harry in the ‘cafeteria’, and he sighs in relief when he finds a set of knives on top of a small single-stove kitchen.

_Fuck, Harry, I’m so fucking scared_ , Zayn murmurs.

Harry nods. _Me too. Can you feel it?_

_Yeah._

Harry pulls down his jeans, and then stabs himself in the thigh.

+

Zayn screams. It hurts so much, the wound, because it’s Harry, and because he feels what Harry feels and sees what Harry thinks now.

He tries to tune it down, afraid to wake Mariya up from where she fell asleep in the armchair which now is hers, and he clasps his mouth shut with his hand, tears running down his cheeks.

_Babe? Harry, babe, talk to me._

He hears Harry whimper. _I’m okay, I’m okay. It hurts. I gotta bandage it. Make sure the blood doesn’t trickle. Then I will take the Delphi, and I will try to find a way not to have a limp._

He looks at what Harry’s seeing, and finds blood all over his hands as he takes a clean rag from a cabinet and wraps it tightly around his leg, making sure to contain the blood flow as much as he can. Harry’s in a lot of pain, Zayn can feel it and see it in the worrying _beep_ coming from his brain monitors.

_Okay_ , Harry says at last. _Okay, I think I’m good._

_Good might be an overstatement, Harry_.

Harry chuckles and sniffles, pulling up his jeans again and thoroughly washing his hands to make sure to get rid of the blood.

Zayn sees a couple stains on the floor. _Harry, the floor. There’s blood on the floor_ , he warns him.

_Oh fuck, you’re right. See, you’re like my sidekick now_ , he replies, his voice coming strained and breathy to Zayn’s mind. He doesn’t reply.

Harry cleans the floor and then sighs, going back to the bathroom. He’s limping, but not that much. It’ll have to do.

Zayn watches him as he sits on the bathtub, in front of the mirror. He sees Harry’s reflection, with his cheeks red and his eyes watery. _I’m scared, Zayn._

Zayn nods, brushing his eyes with his fingers. _I’m scared too, babe._

Harry nods, and then grabs the Delphi pill, and gulps it down.

Nothing happens for a couple minutes. Zayn is wildly worried that maybe the Delphi doesn’t have any effect of Harry for some reason, which would be bad for the operation, but good for Harry’s safety.

Then, all the monitors linked to Harry start to beep loud and obsessively.

_What are these noises, Zayn?_ , Harry asks, hearing them through Zayn’s ears. _They’re so fucking loud, Zayn._

They aren’t, but Harry had to remove his in-ears when he went to Oracle, of course. Zayn runs to the screens to check the alarms blaring, vaguely conscious that Mariya woke up and is staring at him with panic all over her little face.

And then, Harry screams.

Zayn is sure he’s screaming out loud as well, but all he can hear is the scream in his mind, a pain in his head so unbearable Zayn’s breath is cut clean off when he feels the same. He falls to the floor, holding his head in a useless attempt at not letting it split in two, and screams with Harry.

“Zayn?” Mariya shouts, running to him and kneeling in front of him, “Zayn?”

Zayn can’t answer. The pain is too much.

It subsides, after a moment, and Zayn looks through Harry’s eyes, sees him bring a hand to his left ear, and withdraw it with blood on his fingers. _Your ear is bleeding. Why is your ear bleeding?_ , he asks.

Harry doesn’t have an answer, but Mariya grips Zayn’s arm so tight it hurts. He looks at her, but she’s not looking back at him. She’s staring up to the monitors.

When Zayn follows her gaze, he understands why she’s so pale.

He sees Harry’s brain scan, and understands.

Harry’s Aegis has cracked in the middle, just like Mariya’s.

+

_My Aegis is cracked_ , Harry thinks frantically. _This means two things. One, I’m about to have Mariya’s same symptoms, and when it happens, I’m gonna be fucked. Two, I need to make a really fucking good shield not to let Irina read my mind for real._

Zayn doesn’t reply, but Harry knows he has to agree with him. _Tell me how to make my shield with the pain, Zayn, please_ , he begs.

He hears Zayn sniffle, and then speak. _Concentrate on the pain you’re feeling. Just think about that for a moment. Let it overcome you. When it happens, keep letting the pain decide what you think. If we’re lucky, Irina will mistake this for you being high on the Delphi._

Harry nods, and does as Zayn has just said. He feels tongues of fire in his leg, and the pain in his head is a close second. _Two pains might be better than one. Why did this happen, Zayn? Why did my Aegis crack?_

_I don’t know, Harry. My guess is too much pressure. The two Delphis mixed, and your brain couldn’t take it._

Harry nods. _So I only have myself to blame. Wonderful. Oh, well. If I have my way, we’re gonna destroy this whole fucking thing very soon._

Zayn sighs. _Stop thinking, Harry. Concentrate. Let the pain do its thing._

Harry does. He lets the pain guide him, lets himself feel it all, and after a moment, he feels Zayn slip away from him. He’s alone in his head. Then, he thinks about Severus Snape in floral button-downs, and only about that, for a while.

When he thinks enough time has passed, he lowers the shield, and immediately, Zayn’s there in his head again. _Fuck. Fuck. I should have known. You can raise your shield. But it’ll also shield you from_ me _. But it worked, babe. All I could see was Severus fucking Snape with your shirts._

Harry, despite it all, despite the pain, chuckles.

That’s when he starts feeling the shivers and the shakes, like he’s taken molly, or something. _Like a drug_.

_Harry, try to stay with me, yeah?_ , Zayn says slowly. _Don’t go too far away from me, please._

Harry nods, and shakes his head to clear his vision. “I can do this,” he says out loud, and then goes out to find Nick.

Nick looks like shit when Harry finally finds him in the room Oracle uses as a lounge. He looks like he just snorted a couple lines of coke, and Harry understands he must have taken another Delphi. Nonetheless, he’s happy they’re alone, because Delphi can’t let two Immunes read each other, so Harry doesn’t have to keep up his painful shield just yet.

Harry is limping a bit from the wound in his thigh, but soon enough he realizes Nick’s all jittery and frenzied in his movements, so he imitates them a little, and he hopes the limp will go unnoticed.

He has to be quick, for many reasons. One of them being that the blood will eventually seep through his jeans, and if these people find the wound, they’re gonna suspect he’s up to something.

“I wanna see Irina,” Harry tells Nick, “I need to speak to her.”

Nick doesn’t question it, probably because he thinks that Harry is eager to tell Irina that he’ll stay with Oracle.

They get to Irina’s door. _I’m gonna raise my shield now, Zayn. I’ll talk to you as soon as I can_ , he tells Zayn in his mind, and then concentrates on lying and not thinking about anything else.

He feels Zayn’s consciousness slip from his own, and his head starts to sway, like having Zayn in it was keeping Harry from totally giving in to the drug.

It’s surprisingly easy, to keep _not_ thinking. The pain in Harry’s leg is almost unbearable, and he’s too scared to be found out before he can gather proper intel, so he doesn’t let himself get even _close_ to thinking about Haruspex.

Irina makes Harry and Nick sit, and she sends a grin in Nick’s direction. “Already under it, eh?” she asks him.

Nick is shaking. “Yeah. Yeah. It works quicker, these days.”

Irina grins again. “Good.”

_Why is she grinning like that? No, Harry, don’t think this. Think about her. She’s so hot, Irina. I love her legs. I saw her tits earlier. So fucking hot._

Irina senses Harry’s thoughts, because she looks at Harry with another kind of grin, a purely sexual one. _I knew you also thought I was fit, Harry Styles_ , she tells him with her mind.

Harry nods. _Yeah. Yeah you are._

Irina chuckles. And then, without any warning, she starts to aggressively scavenge in Harry’s mind. Harry feels like a tiger has gotten inside his brain, sniffing and shredding his mind layer by layer. Irina giggles manically while she keeps trashing Harry’s mind like she would trash a room to find something hidden in it, and it hurts, to keep the shield up against such an invasion.

But Harry manages, not thinking about what it is he has to defend from her, and just focusing on the pain in his leg. He’s also scared, that Irina emits such hatred and frenzy, and he thinks something must have gone very wrong in this girl’s mind, to make her like this.

In the end, Irina seems to be satisfied. She’s panting and giggling, her eyes shining. “Very well,” she says out loud, “I think you’re good, Harry Styles.”

Harry smiles at her. “Thanks. For trusting me.”

Nick is whimpering, low in his throat, and when Harry turns to look at him, he sees his eyes completely out of focus, his mouth slightly agape, and his chest rising and falling in heavy breaths. He has a little blood trickling from his ear, and he’s frowning, massaging his temples like his head is hurting.

Irina smiles. “Nick, love? You might wanna go to bed. We’ll give Harry a room, and you can keep partying in the morning, I think it’s enough for today,” she says, her voice calm and low like her manic episode from earlier never happened.

Nick nods, sniffling. “Yeah, yeah, I’m knackered. See you tomorrow, Haz,” he says, and then stands up, stumbling out of the room on unsteady legs.

As soon as he’s gone, Irina grins at Harry and sits on his lap again, grinding a little. “Wanna have a little bit of fun, Harry Styles?” she asks.

Harry gulps down. “Irina, you should know that… whenever I take drugs, there’s a… like, a collateral effect.”

Irina laughs. “You can’t get it up when you take pills?”

Harry does his best to blush, and nods.

Irina sighs heavily, and then stands up. “Okay,” she pouts. “Maybe when you’re sober again, then. We have time,” she winks at Harry, and then gestures to the door with her head, to mean _get out of here now_.

Harry does.

+

Harry waits until it feels like everybody _living_ in the building is asleep, and then he quietly tiptoes out of his room, blindly stumbling in the corridor until he finds the door labelled _Planning Room_.

He can’t risk lowering his shield, because if someone is awake, they’ll hear his intentions. He has to be without Zayn for a while longer. He takes a silent breath, and forces the door open. It goes without resistance. It’s unlocked.

_They trust each other because they can_ read _each other_ , he thinks quickly before stopping his thoughts again. His leg hurts so much. He changed the bandage, but he needs stitches. He knows that a tight bandage is not enough to properly stop a blood loss, and he feels faint.

He locks the door behind himself, and lights a lamp he sees on a table in the darkness.

The room is not that big, and there’s just some chairs in front of a very old-looking desk, with leather insertions and drawers. Harry nods to himself, and opens them.

They’re locked. Harry curses and then looks for something, anything he can use to break them open. He finds a small paper knife, and slowly slides it through the crack on top of the drawers, pushing the lock open from the inside. After a couple failed tries, he manages to unlock the set of drawers.

There’s a leather-bound diary which reads _Irina Petrova – Oracle History_. Harry doesn’t even look at it, he just stuffs it in the waistband of his jeans. He can’t look at the things, because he _can’t think_ about them without giving himself away.

There’s also a blueprint for the Oracle headquarters. Harry briefly takes a glance, noticing that there’s another room next to the lab under the stairwell, and it’s labelled _Extraction Room_ on the map.

The rest seems to be bills, bank documents, some receipts for transactions Irina made to Nick, among other people. _They really_ work _for her. She pays them. With the money they make from selling the Shield._

There’s a ringing in Harry’s ears, and he shakes his head, violently. He feels his ear become wet, and he strokes it. His fingers come back covered in blood, again. _I think I’m dying_ , he thinks, his head swerving.

His eyes land on another document which reads _Extraction and Telepathy Spreading._

“Yes yes yes,” Harry mutters. He grabs the document, and he decides it’s time to risk it and go back to Zayn with his mind. So even if they catch him, Zayn will _know_ whatever the document says.

He lets his shield fall. _Zayn. Zayn._

_Harry? Oh, fuck. Harry. Are you okay?_

_There’s no time_ , Harry says frantically. _They could hear me and find me out any moment. I found things, Zayn. Documents. I’m gonna read as much as I can to you really quick before anyone catches me. You listen._

He feels Zayn breathe heavily. _Okay._

+

Harry starts to go over the document labelled _Extraction and Telepathy Spreading_ , and he can’t read every single word because he has to be quick, but the sense is clear.

It was Oracle who created the Disease, somehow, and then produced the Shield against it to exploit the outcome, just as Haruspex always thought.

There is a page about the spreading and _stopping_ of the Disease, and Zayn’s heart almost stops for good. Harry doesn’t read it, he just stuffs it in his jeans pocket.

Zayn would like him to read it anyway, but he knows Harry can’t have the brain activity about _that_ wake everybody up.

_Zayn?_ , he then calls, and his mind voice is strained and off. Zayn sees Harry’s vision blur for a moment and then focus again, and he feels a fear for Harry he’s never quite felt before.

_The Extraction they’re talking about. It’s the extraction of an Aegis_.

Zayn feels like he’s about to throw up. He goes over the document with Harry, but Harry’s right.

_The extraction of the mind shield is lethal for the bearer. But if instructions are correctly followed, and the Extractor is used, it can be done without breaking it. The bearer dies, but the mind shield is safe. The bearer has to be alive for the process. And once the process starts, it’s irreversible. Take care of handling the mind shield delicately. It’s as fragile as wet paper._

“Why would they want to extract a whole Aegis?” Zayn mutters. “It doesn’t make any sense”

Harry doesn’t reply. Zayn knows he can’t, he’s already straining with all he has to read over those things for Zayn without thinking too much about it so that nobody will hear him.

_These other documents say that the lab downstairs is next to the Extraction Room. I have to go see what’s in there, Zayn. What this Extractor is, how they use it, and why_ , Harry says in a slurred tone.

Zayn shakes his head. _Harry you’re not well._

Harry chuckles. _I think I’m dying, babe. And if I have to, might as well die doing something useful._

Zayn can’t stop Harry, so he lets him go, and follows him with his mind as silently as he can.

+

“Where are you taking me?”

The scream makes Harry’s blood freeze in his veins, but he’s hidden in the shadows of the stairwell, and nobody notices him.

The voice is Nick’s, Harry fairly sure of it. He sees shadows of three men holding Nick by the arms and pushing him into the extraction lab.

Harry has almost lost sensibility to his leg. _Maybe it’s an infection and I’ll die. But I think I’m dying anyway_.

With the loss of sensibility comes a loss of pain, and Harry starts to think more clearly, which is bad, because it means people can also _hear_ him more clearly.

He starts to feel Zayn in his mind again. It’s not a good connection, more of a gentle presence hovering over him, but it still means his shield is damaged. _Just like the one I have in my brain for real_ , he thinks bitterly.

Harry quietly slides into the shadows and crouches against the closed wooden door of the _Extraction Room_ , setting his eye into the keyhole.

He doesn’t know if Zayn is looking, but he kinda hopes he is. Just in case Harry doesn’t make it out of here alive.

Irina is there with two people in white coats, and Nick is being pushed onto a medical bed, while he tries to thrash and wiggle away, to no avail. _He’s too weak._

“What are you doing?” Nick demands from Irina.

Irina chuckles. “You’re ready, my love. Ready for extraction.”

“Extraction of _what_?” Nick shouts.

The grin Irina produces is manic. “Your mind shield, of course.”

Harry’s stomach churns. _She’s talking about his Aegis. Fuck. Fuck._

Harry doesn’t have time to do anything, or think anything. Because a small machine set on a table whirs to life after Irina just presses a button, and a second later a mechanical tentacle flips in the air, with a big needle at the end, and it stabs Nick in the back of his head.

_The Extractor_ , Harry realizes.

Nick doesn’t even scream. He just has a small convulsion, and then he blinks, staring at Irina with his mouth open.

Irina strokes his forehead. “Sorry, baby. All that Delphi we gave you? It was just to weaken your mind shield so that it could be ready to be extracted without breaking. It was never to _help_ you read minds,” she says, pouting.

Nick gurgles. “Why? Why are you doing this to me? It hurts. It hurts so much.”

Irina shrugs. “I can imagine. Or no, I can’t. But no matter, baby. I need your mind shield for reasons I can’t explain right now. And I’m afraid you’re gonna die in the process. Once the needle drills your head, you’re already dead,” she laughs.

Nick tries to get free, but when he moves his head, the mechanical tentacle of the Extractor rattles, and he screams in pain.

_He’s dying. I’m dying. We’re all dying. What does this extraction mean? Why?_ , Harry thinks, trying to calm down.

It’s horrible to watch, the moment Nick dies and his Aegis is extracted. Harry sees the back of his head split in two, spontaneously, and instead of blood, a shimmering red substance in a gas state trickles out. Irina laughs, setting her hands under Nick’s head to gather the substance in her hands.

Nick’s Aegis, in its real form. A small cloud of sparkling red gas.

Irina giggles and then pets the substance like she would pet a cat. “Hello, mind shield,” she whispers, “I’m so fucking ready to use you. But first…”

She hands Nick’s Aegis to one of the doctors, who carefully places it into a box.

And then, she moves too fast for Harry to do anything, and she runs to the door, banging it open and pushing him with his arse on the ground. “Hello, Harry, love. You think too loud,” she grins.

The guards are on him in a second, and Harry tries to bend his back so that the notebook he stole won’t stick out.

Irina doesn’t look at him, and goes back to the box with Nick’s Aegis. “Take him away. I’ll deal with him later.”

+

Zayn calls Liam, Niall and Louis in his lab, and tells them all about what happened. About Irina Petrova being the head of Oracle, and about Harry’s Aegis breaking, about what they found out.

Mariya is still in the lab as well, another set of buds on her temples. They only have two more sets, and then everything will get worse.

His stomach is turning without stopping, at the thought that he can’t see what Harry’s doing. _What if they find him out? What if they kill him?_

Mariya goes out of the lab to go pee, as she announces, and Liam waits for her to be out of earshot before turning to Zayn. “If Harry doesn’t find anything else,” he says seriously, “we have to break in there. And kill Irina Petrova. Oracle is even more dangerous than Haruspex thought, Zayn.”

Zayn nods, massaging his temples, where he still feels the lingering pain of Harry’s Aegis cracking. “Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life,” he murmurs. “Harry, Harry. Where are you? Please talk to me.”

Harry doesn’t. An hour passes like that, with them waiting without being able to do much.

Something feels incredibly off. He has a flash of Harry’s thoughts, like he’s being pushed somewhere, like he’s asking for help, and he rises to his feet, his lungs constricting. “They found him,” he just says, “Fuck, fuck.”

He realizes Louis has gone out of the room only because he comes back in a haste. “Mariya is gone. She went to pee an hour ago and never came back, we didn’t notice. We can’t find her anywhere.”

+

Harry has been thrown in a cell, and the pain when he hit his leg, mixed with the pain in his brain, is killing him. For real.

_Zayn?_ , he tries, because he’s been found, so he might as well try to warn Zayn.

_Harry?_ , he hears, but it’s like there’s static in there, like the connection is not good.

Harry realizes the effects of both Delphi pills are already wearing out. _They mixed and cracked my Aegis, but they’re also undoing each other. Good. Go the fuck away from my mind. I won’t be able to talk to Zayn, but nobody will be able to read my thoughts._

He knows Irina will force another Delphi down his throat when she’ll finally decide to deal with him. And he still doesn’t know what the Aegis extraction is for, although he can’t imagine it’d be anything good. He still has the diary and the sheet about stopping the Disease in his jeans. He doesn’t take them out, though.

He’s in kind of a dungeon, with hard soil under his arse, and bars to confine him. The guards are outside the door to this weird and rudimental jail room, where other cells are lined by Harry’s, all empty except for him at the moment.

The door where the guards are is opaque, and Harry must be dreaming, because he hears a _thud_ and a _buzz_ , and the next moment he sees the guards fall to the floor with two small grunts.

_Is it Zayn? Did he already come? I’m dying. My brain feels like it’s about to fry. My leg hurts._

The door opens. Harry looks up, but he doesn’t see anything.

Not until he lowers his gaze a little bit.

Mariya’s there, her blonde hair an utter mess, her breath ragged, and a fucking taser in her hand. “Harry!” she hisses, and runs to him, holding some hair pins in her mouth and starting to fucking pick the lock to Harry’s cell.

Harry is definitely dreaming, but he speaks anyway. “Mariya?”

Mariya grins, still working on the lock. “My buds fell off but Niall didn’t notice. It hurts but I read your friends’ thoughts,” she says, and Harry notices she doesn’t have anything on her temples, and she’s pale, shaking and sweating. “I see where you are in their heads. And I steal Niall’s _buzzzzz_ thingie to fight people,” she waves the taser a little, “And I come here to free you. Irina is bad. She will kill you. And I don’t want her to kill you.”

Harry is about to break into hysterical laugh. “How the f… _hell_ did you get here?”

Mariya rolls her eyes. “I take bus, of course, Harry. I’m ten, not one, _da_?” she replies, and the lock clings open, the barred door rattling. “I also got these before coming down here,” she adds, and raises her t-shirt. Her jeans are stuffed with documents Harry recognizes as the ones in the drawers he opened in the _Planning Room_ , the ones he couldn’t take himself.

He chuckles, picking Mariya in his arms and holding her close. “We gotta get the hell out.”

Mariya nods and whimpers a little. “Hurts,” she says, “My Aegis is cracked. Yours too. Zayn says it’s bad.”

“I know, doll, I know,” Harry says, looking around, but there’s no other way out than the only door. “Mariya?”

“Yes?”

“We’re gonna run very fast now. Hold on to me,” he says, and when Mariya braces herself with her arms around his neck, Harry runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one chapter to go! Let me know what you're thinking :)
> 
> I am also on Tumblr as wont-you-stay-till-the-am.tumblr.com, come hit me up if you wanna talk.


	6. Sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We have to go now,” Zayn says. He tries to fight the panic rising up in his throat. He doesn’t quite manage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual disclaimer: I don't know or own any of the characters present in this work. I only own the plot and the original characters.

Zayn has the whole Haruspex staff looking for Mariya in the building, but as soon as he enters her small room in the med department, he knows they won’t find her.

Her pyjama is on the bed, where she probably changed into her clothes, and Zayn can see her four small metal buds on the floor. There are little muddy prints going out of the room. “She went away,” he says. “She went to Harry. Her buds fell, she saw where Harry is in our minds, and she went to save him.”

Louis curses, driving his fingers through his hair. “What do we do, Zayn? It’s dangerous. If Irina Petrova finds her, she’ll fucking kill her.”

Zayn nods, sitting on the bed and thinking. “We have to go there. We have to get them out.”

“Zayn, it’s too risky,” Liam replies. “If Irina Petrova finds Mariya, she’ll kill her, yes. But if Mariya managed not to be seen and miraculously got into Oracle unnoticed, and we _alert_ Irina, then she’s gonna kill her and Harry because of _us_.”

“What am I supposed to do, Leeyum?” Zayn shouts, “Just wait here until Harry and Mariya either show up or die?”

Liam sighs, his eyes darting left and right while he thinks. “We’ll go there. Silently. Just the four of us. We’ll hide in the cornfield in front of Oracle. And we’ll try to get Harry and Mariya out without Irina Petrova noticing.”

Nobody replies, but Zayn knows Liam’s idea is their best shot. Then, after a moment, Niall murmurs something unintelligible, looking at Mariya’s bedside.

“What?” Zayn asks.

Niall shows them an empty little plastic box. “The last four buds I made. She brought them with her,” he says, “I think she brought them to have a way not to be noticed. That kid is a fucking genius, Zayn.”

Zayn chuckles, and nods. His phone beeps aggressively, and when he takes it out, he sees the values for Harry’s and Mariya’s brain scans are going down and down. The cracks in their Aegises have expanded.

“We have to go now,” Zayn says. He tries to fight the panic rising up in his throat. He doesn’t quite manage.

+

“Harry?” Mariya whispers in the darkness.

Harry shushes her, holding her tight into his arms. They made it to the bottom of the stairwell, where the labs are, without being seen. Judging from the quiet he can still hear all around, nobody has yet discovered that he’s gone from his cell.

Mariya grunts quietly. “Harry, you _listen_ ,” he hisses.

“What?” Harry asks at last.

Mariya struggles a bit to rummage through her pocket, and then produces four little shiny things, which glint a little because of the very faint light coming from the lab at the end of the corridor.

“Are these your…” Harry asks, abashed.

Mariya nods. “I share with you. So they don’t hear us. Ninety-five percent probability they work only half the time, half the power. It will have to do,” she declares.

Harry chuckles, and takes two of the buds, pressing them to each of Mariya’s temples until they emit a small buzzing noise, and stay in place. Mariya takes the other two, and applies them to Harry’s head. “You’re a little genius,” he tells her.

Mariya nods. “Zayn says too. _You’re a little genius,_ kukla,” she tells Harry. “Now we go to the bad room where bad man with chewing gum was screaming.”

“What? I just said you’re a genius, and now you’ve lost your mind?” Harry hisses.

Mariya rolls her eyes and grunts. She almost looks like Zayn, when she does that. “We have to take the evil machine, Harry. So they can’t use it.”

_Fuck, she’s right, she’s fucking right, if we take the Extractor, even if they can build another one, it’s probably gonna take ‘em ages._ Harry nods, deciding that if they’re risking their lives, they might as well do it by doing something useful in the process. So he slowly leaves the wall against which he’s leaning, and quietly tiptoes to the door. He can see only one light on, and by the movements he can make out through the keyhole in which he peeks, there’s only one of the two ‘doctors’ inside.

“Down,” Mariya demands, wiggling, and Harry thinks that at this point she knows best, so he puts her down.

Mariya takes a breath, and then rips off a hair-tie from her wrist, scooping up her long hair in a messy bun, like Harry does. And then, she opens the door before Harry can stop her.

The doctor sees them, and he gapes, probably not yet processing what the fuck he’s seeing as little Mariya saunters to him, hands on her hips, while Harry follows.

“Who the fuck are you?” the doctor murmurs, looking at the child.

“Your worst nightmare,” Mariya declares, quite theatrically, and then attacks his shins, making him fall by sheer surprise effect rather than actual strength. Harry quickly gets in the room and kicks the man in the face, knocking him unconscious and hearing the disgusting squelch of his nose breaking.

Mariya murmurs something in Russian at the man with a grimace, and Harry doesn’t know Russian, but he has a feeling none of the words leaving Mariya’s mouth is clean. “Language,” he tells her, and she giggles a little.

Then, the kid runs to the Extractor, which luckily only has the size of a rather small gramophone, and makes sure it’s turned off before carefully picking it up and hugging it to her chest.

Harry’s eyes fall to the box next to it, and his stomach churns when he sees something red shimmer through the corners of the box.

_Nick’s Aegis_.

Harry never stood Nick, not really, but that didn’t mean he wanted him to die, to _watch_ him die without being able to do nothing. And all for that little cloud of rubies-like gas, he thinks.

_I don’t know what they’re gonna do with his Aegis. But I think it’s fair to assume it’s nothing good._

Mariya looks at Harry. “A hundred percent probability they want to do bad things with Aegis” she tells Harry.

Harry nods, and looks around. _I need to destroy it. I’m sorry it’ll make you be dead for nothing, Nick. But I have to make sure they won’t be able to use your Aegis, I really have to._

“How do you destroy an Aegis?” he mutters, frantically thinking. They have to be quick. He can’t know if anyone has been alerted by their small commotion. _Come on, Harry. Think think think._

He remembers something he’s read in those fucking documents Mariya now has in the waistband of her jeans. _Take care of handling the mind shield delicately. It’s as fragile as wet paper._

Harry nods, and decides he doesn’t have time to mull it around anymore. So he opens the box, and stares down at Nick’s Aegis.

It’s only as big as Harry’s face, probably even less, and it’s beautiful. It shines and shimmers in shades of red, beads of light running through it like small lightnings. _I’m sorry_ , he thinks, and then smashes his fist on it.

It’s gone, just like that. The Aegis is indeed very delicate, because as soon as Harry’s blow hits it, the cloud of gas just pops and vanishes, like it never existed in the first place. Harry feels tears come up his throat, but gulps them back down.

He hears a rustle, and when he looks at Mariya, he sees her store all the fucking letters and documents she stole in a backpack she found somewhere in the lab. She shrugs. “Safer,” she just says, slipping the backpack on her shoulders and then clutching the Extractor to her chest again. “We have to go, Harry.”

Harry nods, and picks her up in his arms again, quietly going out of the lab, and starting to climb the stairwell, because he knows the only way in and out of Oracle is through the main entrance.

Just when they reach it, and Harry starts to think that maybe, _maybe_ they’re really gonna make it, he hears the screams.

It’s Irina, and they’re coming from downstairs. She sounds like a wounded animal, and among the wails Harry can hear “FIND HIM”, “I’M GONNA KILL HIM”, and “I’M GONNA BREAK HIS FUCKING SKULL”.

Mariya gasps and clutches the Extractor and Harry’s chest tighter, murmuring something in Russian under her breath.

“Mariya?” Harry says, gulping down.

Mariya nods. “We run. I know.”

Harry starts to run, and when he does, all the lights turn on, and he hears Irina’s screams coming from right behind him.

+

Zayn sees the lights go on in the whole building, and he hears the screams of a woman, screams that sound like they’re not even human.

“She realized they’re gone,” he says surely, even if he doesn’t have any signals coming from Harry’s mind. The selective Delphi must have worn out, and if Mariya was really as clever as Zayn knows she is, she gave Harry half of her buds to make sure they both had a chance at being more shielded.

Zayn and the lads can’t do anything but keep hiding in the cornfield, because something tells him Harry hasn’t been caught, not yet, and trying to break into Oracle would only lower his chances even more. If Mariya was there, she’d tell him that Harry has one percent probability of making it out alive or something. Zayn doesn’t wanna lower it to a fucking zero.

+

Harry’s leg starts to hurt like a motherfucker as he runs towards the entrance, chased by Irina and her guards. He lowers his eyes, and sees blood gushing through his jeans. _The bandage didn’t hold_.

He absurdly thinks he’s lucky, because it’s probably around three in the morning, and there are no people between him and the gates, at least.

_I must be going crazy. They’re chasing us. Irina is probably about to pull out a gun and shoot us or something. And I’m thinking I’m lucky._

“STOP RIGHT THERE OR I’LL FUCKING SHOOT YOU!” Irina screams.

Mariya, absurdly, giggles. “She doesn’t want to kill us. I mean, she wants to. But she can’t. The Aegis needs to be taken when the bearer is alive, it is written in the papers. If we die, our Aegis is gone,” she whispers against Harry’s neck.

Harry laughs. He laughs, and then turns to face Irina when he’s right by the gates. Mariya keeps herself up with her arms around Harry’s neck, and Harry uses the surprise and anger on Irina’s face when she sees _her_ to try and open the gates slowly, behind his back, without being noticed.

He pulls his best scared face. “Irina, don’t hurt her, please,” he begs.

Irina is pointing her gun at them, but Harry sees the rest of her guards falter when they realize Harry is holding a child that young. They look at each other, then look at Irina, and then at Harry and Mariya.

Irina laughs manically. “Don’t hurt her? I’m gonna fucking _rip her to pieces_ , starting with her fucking _brain_!” she screams.

Harry’s hand blindly reaches for the handle, and when he unlocks it, he mimics faltering under his wound and Mariya’s weight so that she won’t notice he’s opening the door.

Mariya and Irina look at each other. “I won’t let you leave,” Irina pants, “I’ll kill you.”

Mariya smiles. “ _Da_ , sister. Like you killed Klaudia,” she says. “I read. I learn.”

Irina loses all her colour from her face. Harry doesn’t know what Mariya is talking about, but Irina does, because her hand starts to shake. “I _didn’t_!” she screams. “Omar did! I didn’t _know_! I was _ten_!”

Mariya shrugs. “I am ten. But I am different. From you. You’re evil. You want to kill me and Harry,” she replies, absurdly calm. “I am different, Irina. I am _special_.”

Irina grunts, but she’s not taking any more steps towards them, her body shaking too hard in anger.

_She’s distracting her. Fuck. My little genius_. Harry chuckles. “We run, Mariya,” he whispers to her.

Mariya nods. “ _Dasvidaniya, sestra_ ,” she says.

Harry shoulders the gates open, and runs, hearing the sounds of gunshots exploding behind them.

He doesn’t speak Russian, but he knows what Mariya said.

_Goodbye, sister_.

He doesn’t dwell in the open air, and immediately ducks into the cornfield, hoping the plants will be cover enough.

_They will cover us, but we’ll lose our direction_ , he thinks with panic rising up his stomach. His leg is almost giving up.

“Harry?” Mariya whimpers, starting to shake. “The buds are almost gone.”

Harry realizes it’s true, because he can feel them starting to itch on his temples, and he knows it means they’re about to fall off. “Don’t worry, doll. We’re gonna make it. We’ll go back to Zayn. We’ll fix you.”

Mariya shakes her head, sniffling and holding the Extractor in between their chests. “No, Harry. I read. I learn,” she replies in a small whine.

Harry doesn’t understand what she’s saying, but he shushes her, and keeps walking, trying to keep his course straight.

That is, until he clearly sees the shadow of someone delineating itself in front of them, running right for them.

Harry screams and tries to change direction. Mariya screams too, and she hits the man in the face with the mechanical tentacle of the Extractor.

“Ow! Ow, fuck!”

Harry thinks he might be dreaming when he hears the voice of the person in the darkness. “Zayn?”

Mariya gasps. “I punch Zayn!” she hisses.

Zayn is indeed there, and he comes closer. Harry can see blood trickling from his nose, where Mariya has delivered her blow. “Yeah,” Zayn says, sighs, “Yeah.”

Harry laughs, and then his legs give up. He prays Zayn will grab Mariya before they both hit the ground, and then everything goes black.

+

Zayn has just started going over all the documents Mariya and Harry have stolen from Oracle when Harry comes to with a pained groan. He’s lying down on the couch in Zayn’s lab, and Zayn sees him slowly blink and stand up, holding his head with a whimper.

The crack in his Aegis on the screen is even wider, and so is Mariya’s. Zayn doesn’t know what to do.

“My head is exploding,” Harry murmurs, brushing his eyes with his hands. Then he slowly raises his eyes, and sees Zayn. “Zayn,” he sighs, and stands up.

His leg has been stitched and bandaged by Louis himself, and Zayn knows it must still hurt an awful lot, but when Harry starts to limp towards him as fast as he can, Zayn also lets go of the fear for a second, and runs to Harry, wrapping his arms around him and holding him as tightly as he can.

“Oh, Harry, babe, I was so fucking scared,” he whispers with his face in the crook of Harry’s neck.

He feels Harry nod. “I know. I could feel it. I still can,” Harry says.

It’s true, Zayn thinks. He can’t properly feel Harry’s thoughts, but there’s still _something_ his mind is communicating to Zayn, waves of feelings and sensations. Zayn knows that the effects of the Delphi are long gone, and that he can have that wobbly contact with Harry’s mind because his Aegis is irreparably broken.

“Where’s Mariya?” Harry asks quickly. “Is she okay? Where is she?”

Zayn cups Harry’s face with his hands. “She’s here, she’s safe,” he replies. “She’s sleeping upstairs in the med department. And, Haz, babe. Let her sleep. I’m not sure she’ll be able to tolerate the pain anymore.”

Harry’s lips tremble, but he surges forward and kisses Zayn, roughly, like he needs that kiss as he needs air. Zayn finds that it’s the same for him, as he presses his lips to Harry’s and thinks, _He’s back. I’ll fix this. I’ll fix him_.

“Liam put a patrol on every entrance of the building,” Zayn tells Harry, “Even if Irina Petrova has the stupid idea of coming here with a war declaration or something, she’ll never be able to get inside. Mariya is safe. And you too.”

Harry nods. His eyes land on the machine, the Extractor, which is currently positioned next to Zayn’s other instruments by the wall. He doesn’t comment on that, but then he sees all the letters on Zayn’s desk, and Irina Petrova’s diary with the document about stopping the Disease. “Have you gone through all this?” Harry asks.

Zayn shakes his head. “I was about to.”

“I’ll help,” Harry decides, and he massages his temples, blinking furiously.

Zayn sighs. “I think you should try to sleep as well,” he mutters, perfectly knowing Harry will never do that.

“Absolutely not,” Harry quips.

Zayn doesn’t protest, and they both sit at the table. Niall, Liam and Louis enter the studio after a moment, and they hug Harry before wordlessly sitting with him and Zayn, splitting the documents among themselves to help as well.

Zayn takes Irina Petrova’s diary, and the first page looks like some letter written for her by an Omar Faulkes. It starts with _My beloved Irina_ , and it dates to roughly ten years earlier.

“Irina must have been barely ten at the time,” Zayn says.

Harry nods. “She said something to Mariya. About her being ten, and she mentioned this Omar lad.”

Zayn nods too, and reads out loud.

_My beloved Irina,_

_I write this to you on the very beginning of our future. You will read this only when I will be gone, and you will be the new Head of Oracle._

“The man is the guy who founded Oracle, then,” Louis muses.

Harry sighs. “She told me he liked Russian women and she was his lover, and that’s why he named her his successor. I guess she didn’t want to tell me that her being the Oracle boss was this guy’s plan all along.” _And that the guy was most certainly a fucking paedophile. She was fucking ten_ , Harry thinks, and Zayn hears his thought loud and clear.

He doesn’t comment on that, and keeps reading.

_We won thanks to you, my love. You guiding us to Klaudia and allowing me to get my hands on her is the reason we’re on the top of the world now._

_It wasn’t particularly difficult to create the Telepathy, once we figured out how to use Klaudia._

_All the mind shields of the Immunes in the world have generated themselves as a consequence of the Telepathy, but Klaudia, her and only her, she was born with her mind shield._

_After we created the Extractor and drilled its needle into Klaudia’s nape, it was clear she was not going to survive. But we were luckily able to extract her mind shield correctly. She died, but the mind shield was whole. It had all the colours of the spectrum, and maybe more._

_We synthetized that into a gas, and spreading it all over the world was the work of a second, compared to the years and years of research we spent on Klaudia._

_It takes one single particle to give the Telepathy to a person. Nobody ever noticed what happened. A whole mind shield might look very small, but when synthetized, a single one is enough for the whole world._

_The Telepathy was born that way._

“She was the one, true Immune,” Zayn murmurs, frantically scanning the page he’s reading. “Oracle created the Disease using this girl’s _whole Aegis_.”

“Fuck,” Niall hisses.

_Know this, my lovely Irina, and do not feel guilty about betraying her. Klaudia Petrova was your sister, but she is also the reason we are soaring now. The reason we’re telepaths, filthy rich, and thriving._

“Klaudia Petrova?” Harry shrieks. “There was a third fucking sister?”

Zayn doesn’t reply, and keeps going, his mind going a mile a minute.

_The Telepathy was not enough. So, we thought to create a pill that would work as a temporary mind shield, and sell it to the highest bidder. That is where our income truly resides. We call it the Shield, and it’s really fucking simple, my love. You extract bone marrow from the Immunes, and you synthetize it with the machines I left you in our lab. Even a kid could do it, and you’ve always been clever with machines._

_A last warning I give you, lovely Irina. Know this: the Telepathy is not permanent, either. There are ways to stop it, which you already know, but even if you manage to fight those, the Telepathy will wear off eventually. You have to make sure you find the Immunes, and get their mind shields to re-create the Telepathy when it will be worn off, in twenty or thirty years._

_Start early. Find them. They’re very rare, but you will manage. The enhanced hearing is a tell-tale sign. The more they can hear, the more powerful their mind shield is._

_All my love,_

_Omar._

“Fuck fuck fuck,” Zayn hisses. “How? What does he mean? How do we _stop_ it? And what does it have to do with the fucking Delphi?”

“The Disease is _temporary_?” Louis gapes. “But then… then it’s, like, it’s good, yeah? We lock up every single fucking person in Oracle and we wait for it to _pass_!”

There’s a huge, gigantic flaw in Louis’s logic, and Zayn can’t bring himself to say it out loud, so he speaks in his friends’ minds, knowing that Harry will know what he’s saying even if he can’t properly hear Zayn.

_The letter says it will still take more than ten years starting now. We can’t guarantee what will happen in such a long time. And even if you’re right… Harry is not gonna last_ ten _more years. Not in these conditions_.

Louis’s face falls when he realizes, and Zayn thinks Louis is clever enough that he should have thought about this, but he didn’t, because he can’t accept Harry is on the brink of death.

Neither can Zayn, if he’s honest.

Harry doesn’t comment on that, but he speaks anyway. “Nick’s Aegis. Irina extracted it to keep it safe until a new Disease needed to be produced. That’s why she kept him with her for so long, brainwashed him, fed him so much Delphi. Because she didn’t just need his bone marrow for the Shield. She needed him _whole_.”

Zayn nods. “You made a good call, destroying it. I’m sorry, Harry,” he says slowly, because he couldn’t stand Nick, but nobody deserves to die so horribly, and for _this_.

Harry nods. “I wish I could have done more.”

“You couldn’t have, Haz,” Liam says passionately. “You did _more_ than you should have. You risked your fucking life for this. You took this… this _damage_ , for this.”

Harry doesn’t reply, and Zayn knows Harry’s head must be exploding right now. He sees him rummage through all the papers, until he finds some sort of study plan, made by Irina for sure, because it’s all in Russian.

“Zayn, I can’t read this,” Harry says.

Zayn takes the paper from Harry’s hand, his eyes flitting over the page and translating.

It’s a mind map, where Irina has scribbled _DELPHI_ in the centre, and then various bullet points:

  * _Created with the same process as Shield, but reversed._
  * _Weakens the mind shield enough to be extracted after 5/6 doses. Safer to use, rather than just using the Extractor at once. Mind shield fragile, need to be delicate._
  * _FIND MARIYA AND RIP HER FUCKING HEAD OPEN_
  * _NOT MY FAULT KLAUDIA DIED_



Harry jolts when Zayn reads that last sentence. The paper is torn there, like Irina was stabbing the page with her pen as she wrote those last notes in all caps, retracing the letters a thousand times.

Harry sniffles. “She helped this Omar get a hold of her sister,” he says. “She had an inferiority complex over Mariya, and Klaudia as well, being special while she was just normal, and she was just a child. So she let Omar Faulkes coerce her into giving her sister away. She’s felt responsible ever since, and it fucked her head up.”

“Why do you sound like you’re trying to _justify_ her?” Liam asks Harry, coldly. “She tried to kill you, Harry. You and Mariya, _her own sister_.”

Harry blinks some tears away. “She was _ten_ , Liam. She didn’t know what she was doing, and if she then grew up with Omar Faulkes, who brainwashed her and also did God knows what to her, then the least that could have happened was that she went crazy over it.”

Nobody replies. Zayn thinks Harry is kinda right, because he doesn’t want to justify Irina Petrova, but he can understand all the _things_ inside her mind. Shitty parents, two sisters which were considered precious and special while she was just _normal_ , an older man taking advantage of her and using her to kill her sister. _Anybody would go mad_ , he thinks.

“Yeah. Anybody,” Harry replies. He then winces, holding his head in his hands and shaking.

Louis looks at Zayn. _We have to find a way to fix him, Zed_ , he tells Zayn with his mind.

Harry chuckles. “I don’t think there’s a way, to be honest,” he says, and then sniffles, taking a couple deep breaths. “Let’s keep reading.”

Irina’s diary is full of her ugly and deranged thoughts about finding the Immunes and tearing their brains to pieces, a list of all the tortures she wanted to perform on Mariya once she could get rid of Haruspex and get her hands on the kid, and more details about the making and composition of the Shield and the Delphi.

Most of the other documents contain the same info, as Niall, Louis and Liam confirm when they go over them quickly.

“Mariya read this,” Harry says after a while. “She read and learned about Klaudia Petrova. She used it to distract Irina when we were running away under her nose. How many _people_ did they ruin, with this fucking madness?” he adds, almost too low to be heard.

Zayn doesn’t know what to say. He’d just like to hug Harry to his chest and try to ease his worries and his pain, both internal and external, but he doesn’t know _how_ , not until he doesn’t find a fucking way to either fix his Aegis or get rid of it completely without frying Harry’s whole brain in the process.

+

They get down to the last, and probably most important, document. It’s just a small piece of paper, written in the same neat handwriting of the very first letter, Omar Faulkes’.

_WIPING OF TELEPATHY._

“Yes,” Zayn breathes raggedly.

Harry’s hands are shaking as he keeps the letter straight so that he can read it out loud. His head feels like there’s a series of needles inside his brain, and everything feels more intense, the sounds—despite the in-ears, which now feel useless—and the thoughts, everybody’s thoughts, and his own.

He forces himself to keep reading.

_If, for whatever reason, you find yourself in a situation in which the only way to save yourself and our cause is wiping away the Telepathy, here I leave you instructions to stop it._

_It is, again, very simple, my love._

_The process is the same to start it. You need a whole mind shield from an Immune. Retrieve it, and synthetize it through the Extractor. The Extractor is fundamental for this. It has a secret mode inside the shell, a mode called ‘Reverse’. You start it, and it will synthetize the mind shield in the opposite way. Instead of producing the gas for the Telepathy, it will produce an antidote. A whole mind shield will produce enough antidote for the whole world population, same as it can produce Telepathy for the whole world. You can spread it in the air by any means you have. It takes one single particle to wipe the Telepathy from a person. They’ll never notice what happens, same as they didn’t notice what happened when we spread the Telepathy itself the first time._

Harry doesn’t speak, and doesn’t raise his eyes from the letter, going over some of the sentences again, and thinking.

_It takes a whole Aegis to stop the Disease. Just one, single, whole Aegis._

The implications of their discovery don’t go unnoticed by anyone, because Harry feels Zayn shake next to him even if he’s not looking at anyone.

The moral conundrum of _is it right to kill one single person to save billions?_ is right there for them, but Harry doesn’t think there’s a need for that.

If he thinks about it, he should have probably understood what this all meant since they actually learned how the Disease was produced. If it took a whole Aegis to make it, it’s only fair that it takes the same thing to stop it.

And Harry knows what he has to do, he knows it in every single termination of his now fucked up brain. “It’ll have to be me, then,” he declares, finally mustering enough courage to raise his head and look at everyone. Everyone except Zayn.

There’s a bit of a commotion as they all start shouting “No”, and it almost splits Harry’s head in two. He whimpers and covers his ears, and they immediately stop screaming, but they’re still listing all the useless reasons for which they don’t want Harry to die.

Zayn is quiet, and when Harry finally looks at him, his face looks like it’s been carved in marble. He’s staring at Harry like if he moves or speaks Harry will be blown to pieces, and Harry sees the glint of tears in his eyes.

_You have to understand, Zayn_ , he thinks as loudly as he can.

Zayn doesn’t hear him, or doesn’t want to reply, because he just keeps staying there, motionless and speechless.

“Harry, no,” Louis says, his voice shaking. “We can’t just fucking kill you!”

“Then who’s it gonna be, Lou?” Harry asks coldly. “Mariya, ten years old? Lyla, eleven? Alex, eleven? George, eight? Are you gonna kill one of them, then? They’re _kids_. I won’t let them become martyrs for this,” he adds, going for a smirk he can’t really feel on his lips. “Besides, let’s face it, lads. I’m already dying. So is Mariya. If this is the way the Disease is gonna be stopped, then it has to be me. And if we’re lucky, once it’s gone, so will all the Aegises, and at least Mariya will be safe and fixed. I owe her that. She saved my fucking life in there. I’d rather the martyr be me. You know how dramatic I can be, and this is just the ultimate dramatic flair of my life.”

Zayn abruptly stands up. “I need some air,” he just says, and leaves the room without looking at anyone.

+

Harry gives Zayn an hour. In the meantime, Louis, Niall and Liam wander off, their faces grim and their limbs loose, like they don’t know what to do with them and feel powerless against what Harry has decided.

Harry, though, for the first time, really feels the opposite of powerless.

It’s like everything he’s gone through since he met and snogged Zayn in that café has led him to this exact moment, and if it’s presumptuous to think so, then he’s presumptuous. But the purpose Harry has lacked his whole life is here now, clear as day.

There is really no question about it. One life to save billions is _nothing_ , if the life is his, and he’s consciously deciding to give it up.

The thought makes him feel more settled. He’s not even scared. He probably will be when the Extractor will drill a hole in the nape of his neck, but for now, he’s just calm. Not even his head hurts that much.

It’s not dying that makes Harry cry when he’s left alone in Zayn’s studio. It’s the thought that _Zayn_ will have to extract Harry’s Aegis. It has to be Zayn, because he’s the one who knows Harry’s brain the best, he’s the one who has taken care of studying Aegises since he joined Haruspex, and Harry is sure he is the one who will take care of Harry’s legacy, physical and moral, the best.

And the thought kills him a little, because Zayn loves him, and he loves Zayn, and he’s conscious that Zayn will probably never recover, and he’ll never be able to forget that the hands which killed Harry were his own. Harry’s heart hurts more than his head, right now.

He lets his tears overcome him for a moment, and then takes out one of Zayn’s blank notebooks, and writes a long, detailed letter for his mother. Anne doesn’t even know what Harry does, same as Zayn’s mother, and she’s convinced that Harry works in a company as an accountant. She’s never asked much, because she knows it’s what Harry has always wanted to do, and Harry thinks she can see Harry’s happy. He is, even if he’s never gotten the job he told his mother about. He tells her now, starting from the beginning, because when he’ll be gone, his mother has a right to know the truth. He writes his apologies to her, for lying and omitting, and he tells her that he hopes she’ll forgive him one day. He seals the letter closed when he’s done, and leaves it on Zayn’s smaller, personal desk, knowing that Zayn will find it and take care of delivering it.

Then, Harry checks up on Mariya. She’s in her bed, asleep and lying down on her side, her small back facing the door of her room. _Good, doll. Sleep. I won’t say goodbye to you, and you will probably hate me for that, but one day you will understand because you will be_ alive _to do so._

Finding Zayn is not even that hard. Harry sees him in the dark, empty cafeteria, sitting in a nook by a window and staring outside, the pale moonlight washing over his face and making his eyes and eyelashes look like silver. Harry indulges himself a little with that sentimentalism, because he feels like he still hasn’t gotten his fill of looking at Zayn, and now he never will.

Harry silently approaches Zayn, praying to God that Zayn won’t push him away.

He doesn’t. Zayn just turns and looks at him, and then scoots a little, to make space for Harry in the nook. “You know,” Zayn says in a whisper, “when I found you and stalked you a little before actually talking to you, I thought you were too innocent for this world.”

Harry chuckles. “Really,” he says, arching an eyebrow.

Zayn doesn’t laugh, and he just nods. “Yeah. I watched you almost 24/7, babe. You were kind to anyone, even to people who weren’t kind to you. You always kissed you mother goodbye on her forehead. You didn’t do random hook-ups. You always smiled. You always said ‘Good morning’ and ‘Have a wonderful day’ when you went in and out of stores. And I remember that I thought, ‘I can’t take this bloke and shove Haruspex in his face, because he’s either gonna go crazy, or he’s gonna lose his innocence’. And I didn’t want any of the two to happen.”

Harry sighs. “Zayn…”

“But you’re not innocent anymore, are you, Harry,” Zayn chuckles bitterly. “Because you had this thing figured out in the back of your mind since we started reading those papers, and you knew you weren’t gonna make it out alive, and yet you didn’t tell me, you didn’t think to _prepare me_ , and now you want me to accept that you’re gonna die in what, an hour? A day? When do you plan on killing yourself?”

Zayn isn’t speaking out of hatred, and his tone is not angry. It’s sad, which breaks Harry’s heart more. “That’s not fair, Zayn,” he replies, his voice shaking. “I didn’t _know_ it was gonna end like this. But I can tell you that if I had known, more time wouldn’t have changed my mind tonight.”

Zayn sighs. “I know,” he says, sniffling. “And I don’t want to accept it. Because if you wanna do this, I’ll have to be the one killing you, and I think I’ll die with you, if I do.”

Harry doesn’t reply for a moment. He stares at Zayn as he shakes and silently cries, his plump lips trembling as he forces himself not to utter a sound. Harry doesn’t want him to keep it in, though, because this is probably the first and last time Zayn will have Harry to catch his tears as they fall.

So he pulls Zayn closer, and knocks their foreheads together. As soon as they touch, Zayn bursts out in real tears, sobbing as he cups Harry’s face and kisses him. His mouth is salty and wet with tears, but Harry opens his own and savours the taste anyway, his own tears joining the pitiful attempt at being closer and speaking with their minds. They can’t, but it’s not necessary.

Harry knows Zayn understands, deep down, and he doesn’t need to tell him that this is the only way, the only fucking way.

“I don’t want it to be the only way,” Zayn sobs, not letting Harry’s lips go.

Harry chuckles. “Now you start reading my mind again,” he just says. “I missed you in my head, you know. It was quite comforting. And embarrassing at times, I’m sure.”

Zayn huffs a teary laugh. “The amount of times a day you think about my dick in you is quite embarrassing indeed, babe.”

Harry shrugs. “Can’t blame me. It’s like giving people a taste of heaven and then demand that they never think about it again.”

Zayn laughs some more, and they don’t speak for a while. They just stay there, so close that Harry is practically straddling Zayn, and they kiss, their hands roam up and down each other’s body like they want to learn it by heart, and they kiss some more.

“I’m sorry you have to do it, Zayn,” Harry says at last. “I’m sorry I’m giving you this burden.”

Zayn gulps down and shakes his head. “I wouldn’t let anyone do it anyway.”

Harry smiles. “I…”

A high-pitched scream and the sound of metal whirring pierce the air all of a sudden, making Harry’s blood freeze and his brain protest in pain.

He frowns, scanning the dark cafeteria to find the source of the noise, but Zayn is up and running already, a desperate litany of “No no no no” flowing out of his lips.

He’s running back to his lab, Harry realizes, following him.

When they get there and Zayn bangs the door open, Harry understands why Zayn sounds so desperate.

+

Zayn’s legs give up when he sees Mariya lying down on the small medical bed in the studio, with the Extractor beeping and rattling, and its huge tentacle shoved in the back of her head.

“NO!” Harry screams, bypassing Zayn to run to her “NO!” he shouts again, his hands going up and down the mechanical tentacle, uselessly trying to find a way to take it out of her head.

Zayn knows there’s no way. _Once the process starts, it’s irreversible_.

Mariya is shaking and whimpering, but she also manages a grin and raises a thumbs-up to Harry. “It’s okay, Harry,” she says.

“No,” Harry pants, crying. “No, how did this, how did you…”

Mariya rolls her eyes. “I’m ten, not one, Harry, _da_?” she grunts. “I know how to operate evil machine. On myself.”

“Why?” Harry moans, his tears so many that they completely soak his face, tumbling down his chin and landing on Mariya’s face where she’s lying down and he’s towering over her.

Mariya giggles, even, and she scrunches her face when she wipes it. The movement makes the needle in her head rattle, and she gives out another scream.

Zayn doesn’t know how he finds the strength to join them. He leans over Mariya as well. “Why?” he asks as well, and feels his own tears stain his cheeks.

“I read, I learn,” Mariya replies with a small shrug. “Better if it’s me, _da_? Coming full circle or summat,” she adds with another grin.

“What do you even mean?” Harry asks, desperate.

“It was Irina. Irina made this happen. Because she’s evil. But I’m good, and so I stop it.”

Zayn sees that the fucking Extractor is whirring still, rattling Mariya’s whole tiny body in the process. She grits her teeth.

Niall, Liam and Louis barge into the room, and Zayn sees them gasp and cover their mouths when they realize what they’re seeing. He can’t bring himself to take his eyes off Mariya, though, and Harry is still completely focused on her as well, tears reddening his eyes, cheeks and nose.

“You read everything, didn’t you?” Harry says defeatedly. “Not only about Klaudia. You also read about how to stop the Disease.”

Mariya hums affirmatively. “ _Da_. They made me that syringe with green substance. Directly into my bone marrow. So, a hundred percent probability that I am ready for extraction,” she says, gulping down and shaking. “And I know you say ‘Has to be me, has to be me’. But it does not have to be you, Harry. It has to be me. You have ninety percent probability of healing when Disease is gone. Me, I have two percent. Too damaged. Too broken.”

“How the f… _hell_ did you even understand all those letters?” Harry asks, and it’s not important, not really, because Zayn has the answer to that.

Mariya smiles. “Zayn always says.”

“What?” Harry asks.

Zayn chuckles, uselessly trying to wipe away his own tears. “You’re a little genius, _kukla_ ,” he says.

Mariya nods. “Harry?”

Harry nods, lightly brushing her hair from her forehead. “Yeah, doll.”

“I’m sorry. Irina. She’s evil, but it’s not her fault,” she blinks. “He made her. The very bad man. Omar. He made her evil.”

Harry nods again. “I know, doll, I know. It’s his fault, not your sister’s. And I know you love her anyway, even if you never actually met her. I can see it in your mind.”

It’s true. Zayn can peek into Mariya’s mind as well, and it’s a bad sign, a sign that her Aegis is giving up completely.

Mariya nods. “ _Da_. The Petrova sisters,” she giggles. “Always wanted a sister. I had two. It will have to do.”

Harry chuckles through his unstoppable tears, and he just lowers his head, to place his forehead against Mariya’s, and he whispers something to her, something in Russian that Zayn doesn’t catch because it’s too hushed.

Mariya laughs. “Horrible pronunciation, to be honest,” she comments. “But. I love you too, Harry. And you, Zayn. And your friends. I have a crush on Liam. I would have married him when I was older, if I could have,” she declares then.

Zayn sees Liam start crying and shake his head, and he can do nothing about that, nothing about anyone’s tears and pain.

Mariya turns and sees Liam, Louis and Niall in the doorway, and she grins, showing them a thumbs-up. “Don’t be too bamboozled, lads,” she says, and Zayn sees Louis and Niall also burst into tears.

Mariya stops speaking English after that. She starts screaming, her back arching off the bed, and it’s in Russian, so fast that Zayn can’t understand.

It’s horrible to watch, the moment Mariya dies, and it’s not only because Zayn has come to love that little girl with that huge brain. It’s also physically horrible, because right then, a cut opens on Mariya’s nape, spontaneously.

Harry has already witnessed it with Nick, but it doesn’t make it less horrible for him, as he gives out an anguished scream, and then forces himself to crouch by the bed, cupping his hands under Mariya’s head and sobbing uncontrollably.

An orange, shimmering substance trickles out of the cut on Mariya’s nape, and not a single drop of blood.

_Her Aegis. It’s so beautiful._

Mariya’s Aegis doesn’t look cracked anymore when it’s finally out of her head.

Nobody is uttering a single sound, they’re not even crying anymore, and Zayn takes care of composing her little, lifeless body, closing her eyes forever, before turning to stare at the small miracle shining and glittering in Harry’s hands.

Harry’s face is lighted in orange as he stares down. “This is the cure,” he murmurs. “And we only have her to thank.”

+

Harry and Zayn don’t get separated from Mariya’s Aegis until Louis and Niall are done fussing over the Extractor to start the _Reverse_ mode. When they’re done, and they have seven empty gas tanks ready to receive the synthetized Aegis—one for each continent, they know it will be enough—Zayn lets Harry be the one to gently place the Aegis into the machine, closing it, and pressing the button.

It takes an awful long time, but they clearly see the tanks being filled with orange gas, and it’s crazy to Zayn, that something so small can produce a cure for the whole world, but he has to believe it will. For Harry, for everyone.

When the tanks are full, Louis peeks into the Extractor, and then looks at them. “I think there’s enough left for a first test.”

Zayn looks at Harry, and grabs his hand. “It’s gotta be you. Mariya said ninety percent of probability you’ll be healed with this. I believe her.”

Harry smiles, and nods. He goes to the Extractor, lowers his face on the opening in the machine, and inhales deeply.

Nothing happens for a few minutes, but then Harry’s brain scan starts to beep and shift, and when it stops, Zayn cannot see anything electric blue inside his brain anymore.

His Aegis is gone, because the Disease is gone from his body. And with it, the pain has gone as well, because Harry sighs and sits down, blinking and then nodding at Zayn with a smile.

Zayn, despite the loss and hurt he still feels about the price they had to pay, chuckles and kisses Harry, complimenting his wonderful, _normal_ brain.

\--

**Epilogue**

It’s a bit weird, really, that Haruspex has been dismantled after the Disease has been wiped out, and yet Zayn still has to go into the same building to go to work now.

He walks past the doorway and heads to the twentieth floor, where his old lab is now just a normal studio.

For Zayn J. Malik, Neurologist.

Zayn chuckles a little at the thought that such a _normal_ job was all he wanted to do, and he finally gets to do it, now.

As he goes, he looks up at the entrance of the Neurology Wing, which is named _Mariya Petrova Wing_ , of course. There’s a framed picture of her, toothy smile and hair in a bun, like she learned to tie it from Harry. Zayn didn’t even know Harry had taken that picture of her, but he did, and it’s basically the only thing they have left of her.

No, that’s not true, he thinks as he gets into his studio and wears his white coat. They have the whole fucking world, a normal world where people don’t get vivisected and brainwashed, and _that’s_ what they have left of Mariya.

Zayn doesn’t like to think about all that, about Haruspex and Oracle, because it feels too much, like another life. But sometimes he can’t help it, especially when he goes to have his coffee break with Louis in the Immunology— _real Immunology_ —Wing and passes by the other pictures.

The ones coming from newspapers and websites revealing about the Disease and the dismantling of Oracle at the hands of five men and a ten-year-old. Zayn would have liked it better if the whole story never got out, but dispersing the cure on the whole world had been a huge ordeal, and people had started demanding answers.

So the Director of Haruspex had called a press conference and revealed everything, from the start of the Telepathy Disease to the arrest of Irina Petrova and her crew of mad scientists.

Well, not Irina, he thinks grimly. When the army and Haruspex invaded Oracle’s headquarters, they found Irina’s lifeless body in a bathtub, with her wrists slit. She took her own life, the guilt and madness in her brain having finally become too much to handle.

Zayn thinks not everybody believes all that shit really went down, but the people in the Haruspex building—now a blissfully normal clinic—do believe it, and they hung those pictures around, because the past should not be forgotten.

He calls Harry during his lunch break, asking him to go out for dinner that night, to celebrate their fourth anniversary. Harry pretends to already have something planned for a moment, in a tone that gives his grin away even if they’re just on the phone, and then gives up, squealing in excitement like a toddler and telling Zayn he’ll wear his flashiest shirt for the occasion.

Zayn rolls his eyes, but he has a grin of his own in place as he keeps talking to Harry and rolls the small box with the ring through his fingers.

The anniversary dinner is just an excuse, after all. Zayn is a bit scared of change, but he thinks they’ll manage to go from boyfriends to husbands and be fine.

After all, Harry was fine when he went from the innocent kid with the lemon and pistachio ice-creams to the badass spy working for a paramilitary organization fighting the Disease.

Zayn sighs, and looks at the small box with another smile. _Yeah. We’re gonna be fine_ , he thinks, and this time, no one can hear him.

It feels exactly as it should.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is done as well. Lemme tell you, it's been a MESS to elaborate this plot, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway! I had a lot of fun writing it for sure. Let me know what you're thinking :)
> 
> I am also on Tumblr as wont-you-stay-till-the-am.tumblr.com, come hit me up if you wanna talk.
> 
> Till next time!


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